


Days Melt Away

by VeteranKlaus



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Hurt/More Hurt/More Hurt/Eventually Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, PTSD, Psychosis, Relapse, Schizophrenia, Self-Mutilation, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Tags updated as they come, Temporary Character Death, Trauma, You know how it is with him
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2020-01-15 04:40:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18491551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: His mind was a fragile thing, stretched thin between drug use and the torment from the ghosts, littered with punji traps from Vietnam. So when it spiralled out of control, it really wasn't unusual at first.





	1. prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short intro, but I hope you enjoy it!

He doesn't notice it at first.

Well, he _does_. But it simply isn't unusual for Klaus, so he doesn't pay attention to it.

It's a simple sound. Similar to if someone was walking down the hallway with a stone stuck to the sole of their shoe and they were dragging it across the floor, but not quite. Or like when a big dog stands on a wooden floor and their paws slip, nails scratching slowly across the floor. It's nothing much but somehow it stands out more than a simple sound in the hallway, as if it was happening in the same room as him. But he could clearly tell it was not happening in his room. 

"You okay?" Ben asks him, and Klaus looks back to his dear, dead brother and hums. He raises an eyebrow.

"Though I heard something," he shrugs. Whatever it was, it's gone now anyway. Ben copies his shrug and turns back to the book in his hands. Klaus wonders how he's not finished it yet.

 

 

They've made it a thing now, since the apocalypse was averted and everyone moved back into the academy (at least for now. Diego wanted to get a proper apartment later, Allison was still fighting for custody of Claire, Vanya needed to learn to control her powers, Luther still needed to find his feet in life. Five looked thirteen and Klaus had nowhere else to go) to have 'family meetings' at least twice a month, though they usually tried to have one every Sunday night. They'd go over progress they were making, or the lack of it, or any problems they had; personal or with one another. 

It was those meetings that they had discussed Klaus' sobriety, too. That had been one hell of an awkward conversation if Klaus had ever known one, but it had been necessary. He had still been shaky from withdrawals, craving his next fic, and Ben wasn't physically able to stop him all of the time. Now that Klaus really thought about it, that had been a horrific conversation. He would hate to go through anything like that ever again. But, he still agreed with the idea that it had been necessary. In as many ways as it had been horrific; traumatic, probably - it had also been useful. Klaus had had a lovely temper tantrum and he'd gotten to truly yell at his siblings. A few tears (mostly on his part) had been shed, and his hands had glowed blue, and then _Ben_ had had a chance to yell at his siblings, too. It was great. Klaus got to point out the whole 'I can't summon dad, Luther, I've tried; okay, you're choking me anyway' situation, followed shortly by his full-blown death in the rave. He got to rant about the Cha-Cha and Hazel situation, too, when no one had noticed he'd been missing (he'd expected it but it still hurt, even when he still had scars on his chest from it.) 

In a completely accidental slip of his tongue, he'd also brought up Vietnam. He'd meant to stay quiet about it; or, at least wait a while. He was getting to it, whatever. That had brought another long conversation where Klaus also brought up Dave. That had, consequently, brought the pity looks to the party, too. 

Overall, that family meeting ended up being way too long, but it had brought to light the fact that Klaus hadn't fucked off to drugs for the shits and giggles of it all when he was younger (out of everything, that surprised Klaus the most; he honestly thought that they knew why he turned to them) and that Klaus was trying harder than they realised. 

If it had been any other time, nothing would have happened. But it wasn't any other time, and Klaus found his siblings looking out for him which was a shocker. It gave him whiplash. Luther sat down and asked him about what Vietnam had been like; not prying into the bad side of things, no. They ended up spending the evening together, Klaus talking about when they'd gone to bars in 'Nam with his squad, how they'd danced in discos, how he'd gotten his tattoo - how he'd explained his own. It was... nice.

He had a night with Allison and Vanya, stealing from both of their closet's and they all did one anothers makeup and hair, and Klaus had rambled about Dave before he had died; the way his eyes shone, the way he hiccupped when he laughed, how his dancing was possibly worse than Klaus'. That was a nice night.

Diego drove him to and from his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for the first month before he decided he didn't need it anymore. He met his detective lady and got to thank her repeatedly for coming to the motel and saving him, and he bought her a nice scarf, too.

Klaus thought things were going surprisingly alright. He had nightmares and something that wasn't a nightmare but Klaus refused to look into it more, even if Ben said  _it's common for veterans to have PTSD, you know. Maybe you should look into some therapy groups; it could help._

He was positively not doing that, thank you very much. He could deal with this himself. Plus, it wasn't terrible. That was a lie; it had been horrible. Blood and dirt and ash had stained his hands and wouldn't come off and John's screaming had echoed in his ears for the rest of the day, images of burning soldiers imprinted on his eyelids whenever he closed his eyes.

If one ignored that, then Klaus would argue that everything was going well. It was fine. He was getting a grip on his powers. His family was acting like a family for the first time ever. It was good.

_Klaus couldn't close his eyes without seeing one of the many horrors his mind could bring up. Sometimes it was the horrific faces of ghosts long-dead that lived in a mausoleum from his childhood, and they clawed at the restraints of Klaus' mind, desperate to be free. Other times Klaus would feel Hazel's weight as he leaned back, all of his weight on the thin rope he held around Klaus' neck while Cha-Cha lit one of Klaus' own cigarettes only to stamp it out on his skin. Sometimes Klaus would feel Dave's blood on his hands and bombs would explode around him and shake the ground._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked the first part and think this is interesting, feel free to leave a comment and a kudos! Thank you!


	2. pray my mind be good to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

"No, go away. Go away, shoo. I'm capable of not burning the house down, Diego."

The brother in question gives Klaus a look, and he throws his hands up.

"What?" He asks, eyes narrowed. 

"Last week you almost blew up the microwave. I don't even know how you managed to do that, Klaus," Diego replies, and Klaus hums.

"Honestly? Nor do I. Anyway, I'm cooking tonight and it's a surprise, so kindly fuck off, brother dear," Klaus dismisses, waving his brother away. "Ben's here, so it's fine." As if to prove his point his fists shine blue and Ben appears to him from where he sat on the kitchen table. He glances up from his book to Diego and nods his head.

"I'll watch him," he promises. 

Diego gives the two of them a final glance before sighing. Klaus grins.

"Good! Go, go, I'll call you when it's done," he urges, waving the tea towel in his hands after him until his brother does eventually leave. 

Now alone, aside from Ben who never left, Klaus turned to the kitchen once more. It's his day of the week to cook dinner for the family and though last week hadn't gone the best, he had been craving a certain dish since, and now he had the chance to make it. He had bought a few things yesterday for it but he came to notice that they had no carrots. He hadn't bought any because _seriously_? _Everyone_ has carrots. He'd just assumed they'd have them.

With a sigh, Klaus turns to Ben. "Will you tell them the others to stay out of the kitchen?" He asks, fluttering his eyelashes. His brother raises an eyebrow.

"Why?" He asks, though he puts his book aside. It disappears. Klaus was never really sure how that book worked.

"We've no carrots," he explains, untying the apron he was wearing. "I need carrots for this. Tell the others that this is my area and they've to stay out while I get carrots," he requests. He hangs the apron up over the edge of one of the chairs, and upon Ben's promise to do so, Klaus finds his shoes kicked off to the side and shoves his feet into them. There's a small grocery shop on the street, so it shouldn't take long anyway. He leaves Ben in charge of the kitchen, running out and grabbing his jacket.

It's a nice day outside; not overly cold, the sun peaking out behind clouds. He makes his way down the bustling street, heading towards the little grocery shop and ducking inside. He just needs carrots. Maybe some lettuce, but he bought that yesterday.

With a sigh he lets his eyes roam over the colourful shelves before finding orange, and he leaps for the carrots. How many carrots does it take? He's never cooked this before, just eaten it. Eventually, Klaus settles on quite a few - better to have more than less, he thinks - and ties them up in one of the little bags for fruits and vegetables. He's tying the not in the bag when he's interrupted. Someone beside him reaches for the carrots, too, and Klaus shuffles aside to let them pass, uttering an apology and glancing up at them.

"Sorry about -," he begins, but the man beside him looks at him with a smooth face, devoid of any facial features. There's a tense moment where they simply stare at one another - Klaus calls it staring because even if the man doesn't have any eyes, it feels like they're burning into him. And then Klaus blinks and the man has thick eyebrows and a full beard and a face tattoo and he's staring at Klaus as if he just spat on his shoes.

Klaus snaps out of it, subtly reaching out - his hands _aren't_ glowing - to pat his shoulder. "Uh, sorry about that, man, I'll let you, uh, get the carrots," he utters. He steps aside, letting the man reach the damn carrots while he steps up to the counter to pay.

_"Isn't he silly?"_

_"Who? Him? He's buying food. He's paying."_

_"He's weird. Они будут следить за ним. Мы должны будем быть осторожны."_

_"Il va mourir."_

_"Jag vet, jag vet. Snart._

" _Corre, chico, corre rapido."_

Klaus turns, eyebrows furrowed, to look over his shoulder. No one's looking at him except for the cashier. No one's holding a conversation in multiple languages. No ghosts are around, either.

Klaus turns back to the cashier, pulling out his wallet and paying with quickly. He stuffs the change carelessly into the pockets of his leather pants and then he hurries out of the shop and back to the academy.

"Where have you been?" Luther asks when he steps inside, and Klaus startles, looking up. There's the lingering suspicion in his eyes that they all have when Klaus disappears without telling anyone, and it hurts. He holds up the carrots.

"We didn't have any," he states, and then he kicks his shoes off, hangs his coat up and slides around his brother, back to the kitchen. The door's still closed and Ben is still hanging out on the table. He glances up when Klaus comes in, seeing the bag in his hands. Then,

"You alright? You look like shit. No offense."

Klaus snorts, heading to the sink. He unties the bag of carrots and runs the water, carefully cleaning each one.

"Who would have thought that buying carrots would be so eventful," he mutters, shaking his head. He runs a hand down his face, thumb and forefinger rubbing his eyes. "You wouldn't believe it. Can ghosts be invisible? I thought I was getting good at seeing them only when I want to."

Ben hums thoughtfully. "I can't," he states with a shrug. "Don't think any have."

Klaus shrugs his shoulders. It doesn't matter. He puts it down to the lack of sleep he's been struggling with lately, and he continues to prepare dinner for the family.

 

"Bún chả," Klaus says, setting the plates in front of his siblings. The plates are topped high with grilled pork, noodles, and vegetables. He sets a plate in front of the seat where Ben is sitting, and his hands glow blue as he manifests. "We used to eat it in 'Nam. It's good," he assures them, and he's damn proud of how he's cooked it. It smells and looks delicious, and once Klaus sits down with his own plate and waves his hands, they dig in.

"Shit," Diego says, "okay. I'll give it to you, it's pretty good," he admits, and Klaus smiles. He hides it by shovelling a forkful of noodles into his mouth.

"Yeah, Klaus. And no explosions this time!" Vanya comments, hiding her mouth with her hand as she chews.

"You've done worse," Five begrudgingly admits, and if Five is complimenting him - because that's a Five-style compliment - then it must be good. 

"Told you it was good," he simply responds, though he's perked up, incident in the grocery store forgotten. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you did enjoy it, feel free to leave a kudos and a comment, I appreciate it all!


	3. the night so black the darkness hums

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from In The Woods Somewhere by Hozier; so was the last chapters' title.  
> Story title inspired by Fall Away by Twenty One Pilots. 
> 
> Anyhow, back to the story!

_Klaus didn't really count how much money the ornament got him in the pawn shop, but it had been enough for a little syringe rom Perry, and then some. He could even afford a bottle of vodka from the liquor store on the corner of the street, and he still had money left over. He thought about buying food with it but the most important thing to him right now was injecting himself and washing it down with his bitter vodka. He ducked into an alleyway to do so, out of sight of anyone else, slumping against the dirty floor and using his scarf as a tourniquet to help make his veins pop. He forgot about food as soon as the high took him, and he clutched his vodka to his chest like a teddy-bear as his eyes rolled back._

_He came to to rough hands on him. Two sets, pulling him this way and that, prodding at him._

_"Yeah, he's fuckin' out of it. Look at that needle; completely fucked. Just check him over," a man said, and at first Klaus thought they were just pretty rude paramedics until their hands went to his pockets._

_Klaus peeled his heavy eyelids open, limbs full of lead flapping like a fish out of water as he reaches out with trembling hands, shoving the intruding hands away._

_"Get off," Klaus whined, arching his back._

_"Oh, he's still with us," another voice said, a sneer turning their lips up._

_"Don't you worry about this," the first man spoke up, mock-reassuring, pushing Klaus' hands away. Klaus thumped down onto the floor with a grunt, eyes falling closed once more._

_"No," Klaus continued, shaking his head. One large hand held his wrists to the side by his head, other hands pulled some change out of his pockets. Klaus yanked his hands around in his grip, flailing around on the floor and trying to shake the men off, though it was futile._   _He cringed as hands then moved to his tight pockets, too close to burning body, and they pulled out the little burner phone he had bought a while ago, the jewellery he'd stolen from his ex and had yet to pawn, and the money he had._

_"That's - that's mine, stop it, stop," he groaned, trying to sit up. He hauled himself up and then, without warning, pulled his head back and slammed his head into the nearest mugger. It wasn't as graceful as it would have been had he been sober, but it was good enough as the man swore and let go of his wrists, allowing him to swing wildly at the other man. His fist hit something hard and then his ears rang as they returned the hit._

_"Fuck! You fucking bastard," a man hissed nasally, and Klaus rolled over onto his other side, forehead pressing into the ground. He felt sick; the vodka and heroin, the sudden adrenaline and the hit, it was all making him nauseous, and he gagged._   _Something hard collided with his back, sent him rolling forwards until his head hit a wall, and Klaus groaned, curling in on himself. Another kick came, this time to his stomach, and then another, another, another, and all he could do was curl his hands over his head and lay there._

 

 

Klaus wakes up with a gasp and a flinch, as if expecting sudden pain though nothing comes. He can still taste vodka in the back of his throat, feel cravings in his bones, and Klaus runs his hands down his face until he remembers how to breathe slowly again.

"Morning," Ben says, watching him from the chair Klaus had brought into his room specifically for his dead brother. Klaus groans, closing his eyes and rubbing them with the heels of his tattooed hands.

"Want to talk about it?" He offers, and Klaus raises an eyebrow at him.

"Have I ever wanted to?" He snorts. He stands up, looking around his room. There was surely _some_ place he had left _something_ that he had forgotten and left behind. 

"Klaus..." Ben drawls out warningly, and Klaus places his hands on his hips, spinning around to face him.

"Yes, Benny dear?" He asks, sickly sweet.

"There's nothing here," he states, and Klaus folds his arms across his chest.

"How could you even _think_ that?" He accuses, shaking his head. "Wow, I thought you knew me better than that."

Ben snorts, rolling his eyes. "I do know you. That's exactly why I know you're looking for drugs again."

Klaus stares at him silently for several moments before slouching.

"Remember that time I got mugged when I was high?" He asks, and Ben snorts.

"Which time?" He says, and Klaus snorts, lips twitching upwards.

"Good point," he says, pointing finger-guns at his brother. "I dunno. There was heroin and vodka and they stole all my money."

"Again, Klaus. Which time?"

"Fuck," Klaus sighs, running his hands down his face and then shaking his head. "I need a drink at least," he says, heading towards the door. Ben is quick, though, and he slides smoothly over, standing right in front of him.

"Go take a bath," he says, and Klaus meets his eyes. A drink sounds better. 

"Fuck you," Klaus replies, walking through him. He does, however, make his way to the bathroom instead. He runs the hot water into the tub and slumps onto the floor beside it, and while it fills he pulls his phone out and presses play on his playlist titled  _bath time._

He lets the music sing out above the sound of water slapping against the porcelain tub. When it's finally full, Klaus leaves his clothes in a heap on the floor and steps in, reaching for the bubble mix and pouring in a generous amount. As he slides down so the water reaches over his chest he thinks that he really should have brought his cigarettes with him - the only thing he could get away with using these days - but it was too late, so he focused on the music and the hot water on his skin rather than the ache in his bones for something more. 

He can hear the sounds of the house waking up, slowly but surely. Luther's heavy footsteps as he gets dressed and hauls himself down to the kitchen for breakfast, Allison's shower running in another bathroom. Diego will already be downstairs, probably attempting to help Grace set the table before the others come down, and Vanya's heading down now, although her steps are light and quiet. Ben is probably still in his bedroom. Five is silent; zapping from one place to the other, presence only being announced by sarcastic comments and the smell of coffee beans.

It's… relaxing. He lets the music drown out his thoughts and the warmth soothes his twitchy, trembling muscles. Klaus slumps down in the tub, tipping his head back and staring up at the ceiling above him.  _The Ink Spots'_ voices gently echo in his ear and his fingers drum on his thigh, humming quietly along with it.

Something moves to his left. Klaus startles slightly, but when he glances that way there's nothing. It was nothing much, a small blur, end he dismisses it as him dosing off in the water, or some dust, and he slumps back into his bath, running a hand down his face. He really needs to get some sleep but he couldn't really help that. He would try to get some sleeping pills or something but he knew that would probably not end well for himself. The joys of having a problem with addictions.

Klaus hauls himself out of the tub once the water began to get cold, reaching for a towel and drying it around his waist, using another one to dry his hair. He turns his music off, grabs his pile of clothing, and heads back to his bedroom. Ben is sitting on his bed, reading, and he glances up at Klaus when he enters.

"Feel better?" He asks, shuffling further down his bed so Klaus can sit down next to him.

"Ugh," Klaus simply groans in response, flopping down. Then, "a bit."

"Told you," Ben says with a telling smile, and Klaus rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Klaus snorts. "I'm still tired," he states, and he listens to the sounds of other people waking up. He hears Allison humming as she gets ready and he can hear the heavy footsteps that belong to Luther. Five is quiet, if not silent, teleporting wherever he needed to be rather than walking like a normal person. Though Klaus supposes that's the normal for Five.

"I still think talking to someone could help," Ben says. His gaze has turned back down to the book in his hands, his thumb messing with the page, flicking it back and forth.

"I talk to you!" Klaus defends, eyebrows raised. Ben gives him a signature exasperated look.

"And I'm not a licensed therapist," says his brother. 

"You're basically my little pocket therapist." With a sigh, Klaus towels his hair dry and drops the towel aside, standing and digging around in his wardrobe. As he pulls out what was once one of Allison's old dresses, Ben doesn't let his eyes stray from the book he's reading until Klaus is dressed. He tops the dress off with a purple scarf he had found in a thrift store, and then he gives a little twirl that makes the dress flow up around his thighs.

"At least my sense of fashion will never falter," he muses dreamily. Ben smirks at him, inclining his head.

"I sometimes wish it would," he says, and Klaus gasps.

"I'm wounded! And here I thought we were buddies, buddies, buddies. Imagine if we had friends. Dad never let us talk to anyone outside the academy - people outside the academy only spoke to me for the parties. I've been sober for over a month... month. C'mon, I think everyone else is awake. I'm starving," he says, hands fidgeting with his scarf. His legs eat up the ground in long strides as he makes his way out of his bedroom, gesturing for Ben to follow him. 

He makes his way to the kitchen, stretching his arms above his head and yawning. "Mornin'," Klaus says, stepping into the kitchen and looking around. No one's there. Klaus sees a flash of a shadow move out of his peripheral and behind him and he turns, expecting Five or Vanya or something, only; still nobody. Klaus rubs his eyes, looking at Ben who's made his way into the kitchen, taking a seat. He doesn't seem bothered like Klaus, so Klaus shrugs off his own odd behaviour and follows him inside 

It takes another ten minutes for Grace to come down to the kitchen, in which she greets him with a kiss to his cheek. 

"I'll be making breakfast in just a second honey," she says, "would you like some tea?"

Klaus smiles at her. "That'd be lovely, thanks."

She gives him a final smile before turning to begin cooking. By the time she sets a cup of steaming tea in front of him, everyone else has eventually made their way to the table in varying stages of wakefulness. 

"You're up early," Diego comments, looking at Klaus.

"Of course," Klaus hums, and Diego raises his eyebrows. 

A plate slides in front of him, topped with pancakes, strawberries and whipped cream. Klaus stares at them, gripping a fork in one hand. The face Grace had made on them, like she always had and had done to all of their breakfast, stares back at him with banana-slice eyes. 

"You not hungry?" Vanya asks, wrenching him out of his staring contest. 

"Hm? Yeah, yeah," he mutters, turning back to his breakfast and digging in. 

There's quiet conversation between them all over breakfast. Vanya discusses her progress with pride, commenting on how she felt she was doing good now, and the table genuinely congratulated her, and Klaus was happy to see them all acting like a family once more. A year ago, none of this would have been happening. It was nice. 

"I'm proud of you," Klaus says, and he means it. Vanya smiles at him from behind her fork. 

"I think we should go out for dinner tonight," Allison perks up, looking over everyone.

"I agree," Klaus hurries to say. "There's a buffet down town that we could go to, or an Italian restaurant elsewhere. I agree, she has my vote."

"Depends where," Five speaks up, hands hugging a warm mug of coffee, watching over the rim of the mug.

"Maybe -"

"Oh! Diego can bring his detective lady - she's very nice - and we can have a lovely night out!" Klaus exclaims enthusiastically, putting his fork down and clasping his hands together beneath his chin. Diego's cheeks warm up at that and he shoots Klaus a weak glare. 

"Or - or not, who knows. It was just a suggestion," he claims, empty hands up in mock-surrender, offering a boyish smile to his brother.

"I think it'd be nice to go out," Vanya pipes up, nodding her head. "We've not been out all together in a while," she adds. Klaus points his fingers at her, bobbing his head in agreement.

"Did you have somewhere in mind?" Luther asks, and Allison shakes her head.

"Not particularly, but I'm sure we can find somewhere new to check out. I just thought it'd be nice," she shrugs, and everyone nods.

"Ben agrees," adds Klaus, glancing at his deceased brother who was sitting in his seat Klaus had pulled out for him. There's a plate of smaller pancakes and a glass of orange juice in front of him. He can't eat or drink it, but Klaus requests that something's made for Ben. For him, it's second nature to include Ben in everything, even if he can't participate in some things. Everyone else had simply gotten used to him pulling out a spare chair, glancing to thin air, splitting his food.

Ben looks up from his food, raising an eyebrow.

"Do I?" He asks jokingly. "What if I think it's a horrific idea? A tragic mistake?"

"Stop being such a pessimist," Klaus scolds with the click of his tongue, shaking his head. 

"I'm dead. I'm allowed to be," retorts Ben, lips tilted up. Klaus blows out a long breath.

"Oh, angsty," he says, "alright, calm down. Stop pulling that card." He turns to the rest of his siblings, watching curiously. "He thinks it's a great idea," he says.

Diego snorts. "Sounds like it," he jokes. Klaus just flashes an innocent smile. Ben scoffs.

Klaus hops to his feet, then, no longer hungry. He actually feels rather nauseous now. "Well, keep me updated," requests Klaus, "I'm off."

"Where are you 'off to'?" Luther asks, and Klaus raises an eyebrow.

"To my bedroom," he drawls. "I'm gonna try and get some meditation time in. You know; powers, and stuff." As if to prove his point, he waves now-glowing hands. Eyes flick to Ben, who is sliding out of his seat and following Klaus. Upon realising the others can see him he offers them a wave and a smile.

"I'll keep an eye on him," he promises. Klaus throws an arm across his shoulders, leaning against him. He gives a thumbs up, taking a few steps back and dragging Ben with him. His hands flicker and suddenly stop glowing, and Ben's figure wavers. Klaus staggers back, hitting the floor with a painful thud. Ben laughs while he groans, and Klaus rubs his face with his hands.

"Fuck. See! I need to practice," he says. Scrambling back to his feet, he turns before he can see everyone else's smirking faces, and he makes his way back to his bedroom. He searches his earphones out, plugging them into his phone and then putting them into his ears. 

"Do you have any plans to actually try and practice? Or was that just to get out of there?" Ben asks. He sprawls across Klaus' bed once Klaus takes his spot on the floor, long legs sticking out, and Klaus shrugs.

"Eh. We'll find out," he responds, flashing a grin. He slumps against his bed frame, closing his eyes and tipping his head back. 

"That means no," Ben translates, and Klaus cracks an eye open to leer at him before tuning him out in favour of his music. Maybe he'll try to conjure another ghost later, or focus on manifesting and un-manifesting Ben at will. 

Klaus, still tired from his rough awakening this morning, attempted to catch another hour or two of some shut-eye once more - preferably undisturbed and dreamlessly. 

 

 

 

When he wakes up, Klaus feels a dread and sharp fear intense enough that it twists the breath out of his lungs and refuses any to come back in.

He's fallen onto his side in his sleep, and he's facing his bed. He can't see anything except for the wooden bedframe inches from his face, and the hairs on the back of his neck are standing up. Someone's in his room. He can feel it. He's never been more sure of anything in his life. He curls his hands to his chest, braces himself to whip around to see the intruder in one... two...

He can't. He feels like he might vomit and he strains his ears to listen to any sounds of something - a person, a ghost. Footsteps or breathing or crying. Fingertips ghost over the skin of the back of his neck like hovering spider-legs and Klaus flinches, sucks in a breath. Then he whips around on the floor, wide eyed and looking around his room. Ben isn't even in there.

Klaus lets out the breath he had been holding and runs a shaky hand through his hair. He had thought he hadn't dreamt - he couldn't remember dreaming - but he must have, if it had chased him into being awake like this. Still, that thought does little to soothe his nerves that still scream,  _they're here, they're here, they're here._

Klaus decides that sleep detests him as much as he detests it, and he uses his bed beside him to pull himself to his feet. He almost stands on his earphones, tangled up on the floor, but he reaches down to grab them and shove them into his pockets.

If he hadn't done so only a few hours ago then he would have gone and submerged himself in the steaming water of a nice bath, but his nerves jumped at that, too. He had been distracted with his bath when Hazel and Cha-Cha had broken in and kidnapped him, after all. He dismisses the idea of a bath or music quickly, deciding that wasn't a safe option. He leaves his bedroom feeling like the walls were inching closer and closer to him, and he makes his way to the gardens, desperate for some fresh air.

It's still sunny like it was when he woke up, a small breeze ruffling his hair, and it's pleasant. He almost wishes it was raining, if only for the coolness it would bring.

Klaus slumps onto the bench outside. His stomach still feels like it's flipping, twisting, tense, and he'd kill for a cigarette right now. Or a drink. Or both. Anything now would be useful.

Instead, though, he has nothing, so he simply chews anxiously on his thumbnail, one leg bouncing. His cheek twitches, lip pulling back from his teeth, again and again, repetitive, and Klaus remembers the grounding exercises he had learned in rehab years ago and tries to put them to good use. 

Klaus glances over his shoulder and back at the house. He can see Diego in the kitchen helping Grace clear up after breakfast. He wonders how far sibling bonds go. Something tells  _not far, not far. Run._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed it feel free to leave a comment and a kudos, I appreciate it all!  
> You can find me on Tumblr @veteranklaus.  
> Thank you!


	4. peel off the colour of the night, a second skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

They go to a new restaurant. It had only opened up a couple months ago but it had good reviews so far, and Klaus checks out the menu on his phone on the way there and decides there's a few things he likes on it.

Diego drives them there in his car, with Luther in the passenger seat - a very asshole move, if one asked Klaus; he had to keep the seat fully extended back - while Vanya - thank God for Vanya, all five-foot-one of her - sits in the seat behind him. Allison is in the middle, and Klaus is on the other seat. Five is on the floor since he's like a twig, Klaus says. Plus, he'd been training throughout the day and had been too tired to zap into a car seat, so he has to deal with the consequences. 

With a growl, Five roughly shoves Klaus' legs. "Stop bouncing your legs!" He hisses, glowering up at him. If looks could kill, Klaus would be having a lovely chat with God by now.

"I can't!" Klaus defends. He focuses on keeping it still, but only a few seconds later and it was bouncing once more. Klaus was a ball of energy on normal days, but he was jumpy and twitchy today and he really couldn't help it.

"This was a horrible idea," Luther mutters. "Some of us could have just taken a cab."

"Well," retorts Diego, "we're here now."

"We're there?" Klaus asks, looking out the window.

" _No_ , Klaus. I meant in the car," Diego clarifies, hands tight on the steering wheel. 

"God, how much longer until we get there?" Five pleads, still pushing at Klaus' legs as if he thinks it's going to make him suddenly a foot shorter. He elbows Klaus' shin and his leg jerks out, kicking him, and both he and Klaus cringe. There's a beat of silence as the two stare at one another, and then Five lunges at him, balling one fist in Klaus' crop top and raising the other. Klaus lets out a loud, manly scream, hands flying to cover his face.

" _Holy shit_!" Diego snaps. "Five, sit the fuck down! Klaus, shut the fuck up! We're gonna fucking crash," he hisses, glaring at them in the rearview mirror.

"He's trying to kill me!" Klaus cries out, shoving at Five and holding him at arms length. 

"Stop it!" Allison says, reaching out to pry Five's hand from Klaus' shirt and gently urge him back onto the floor of the car.

"My saviour," Klaus sighs dreamily to Allison, avoiding looking at Five's murderous eyes.

"We're here," Diego announces suddenly, and the car comes to a stop. As Luther struggles to get out of the car, Five and Klaus fight for the door handle and to scramble out. Five seems desperate, however, as despite his previous statements about being too tired to teleport anywhere, he does. He stumbles a bit when he lands but then he stretches out, looking unbelievably relieved to be out of the car.

"Sweet relief," Klaus utters as he steps out onto the ground, hands on his hips. 

"Klaus is on the floor on the way back," Five states, glaring at him. Klaus pouts at him, shaking his head.

"You really think I'm going to fit?"

"I'll put you behind Luther's seat."

Klaus cringes at the idea of trying to curl himself up in the inch of space behind Luther's seat in the cramped car. "Watch it, young man," he says to Five, then he turns to everyone else. His fingers drum along his thigh, eyes flicking from the restaurant door and his family. They ignore Five and Klaus' little spat, heading to the restaurant, and Klaus follows with Ben walking by his side. Ben had sat on the dashboard throughout the drive, almost taunting Klaus to materialise him just for a second, just for the chaos. 

"You're quite jumpy today," Ben comments, and Klaus raises an eyebrow, glancing back at him.

"Bad dream," he shrugs, writing it down as nothing other than the lingering effects of his nightmare. He stuffs his hands into his pockets, eyes flicking to the side. He catches a woman's gaze and she hastily turns to look away, typing rapidly on her phone, and Klaus wonders why she was staring, why her phone's camera was tilted towards him, why her lips move around the letters of his name when she holds her phone up to her ear. Klaus' gaze lingers suspiciously on her, something telling him that something's not right. She's been waiting here, waiting for them - for him - to come here so she could see him, get him, phone the others to come get him -

He's being stupid. His cheeks twitch and he hurries after his siblings into the restaurant. It's nice; gentle lights around the place giving it a nice atmosphere, dark walls and furniture and leather seats. They take a large table in the back and crowd around it, and Klaus pushes a chair out for Ben. He clasps his hands together on the table in front of himself, crossing one leg over the other, and then he reaches out to take the menu. He isn't hungry. In fact, he feels quite the opposite; his stomach churning and rejecting the idea of food. Allison and Vanya chat amongst themselves while looking over the menu and Klaus stares at the jumble of words in front of him. He wonders where the woman from outside is, who she was on the phone with. Maybe they were in the restaurant, somewhere around him, blending in with the normal people.

_Normal people? What if none of them are normal._

Klaus narrows his eyes, sparing a glance around himself. He's never been a paranoid person, not really, not even when he's been alone on the streets around bad people. So this; this new, unexplained anxiety, this overwhelming paranoia, it's unnerving and he hates it. 

"Sir?" Klaus startles, looking up at the expectant waiter and his siblings staring, Ben's raised eyebrow. 

"Oh, sorry. Just a water and the... salad, please," he requests, clearing his throat and letting the waiter take the menu from him with a polite smile. 

"You good?" Klaus turns to glance at Diego and he hums, fingers drumming along the table.

"Hm? Yeah, yeah. Fine. Dandy," he dismissed. His shoulders bobbed in a shrug. "Just didn't sleep well."

Diego's gaze lingers on him. His thoughts race to tell him  _he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he's going to hurt me._

Diego nods and looks away, glancing at the seat beside him where Ben sat, corporeal thanks to Klaus' glowing hands. The two share a look that make Klaus' heart race but neither of them say anything. 

Their food comes and they all dig in. Klaus twirls the paper straw in his glass of water, listening to the ice clink inside of it. It's cold in his hands, freezing almost, and Klaus' fingertips turn pink from the chill. The salad in front of him looks good, as good as a simple salad can, but he can hardly bring himself to sip his water let alone eat something. He sets the glass down on the table and stands up, slightly abruptly, hands no longer glowing.

"I'm going for a smoke," he announces, not sparing his siblings a glance before he grabs his jacket off the back of his chair and rushes outside. He fumbles with clammy hands to pull his cigarettes out and light one, but eventually it catches and he inhales deeply, holding it in his lungs. He leans back against the wall and uses his free hand to rub his eyes. A faint tremor runs through his hands and he blows smoke out between his teeth.

"What's up with you today?"

Klaus jumps, turning to look at Ben. Ben's been by his side for years, when no one else has been there for him. He's seen Klaus at his lowest, seen him high and vulnerable and being tortured and in hospital when the rest of his siblings stopped showing up. Klaus can trust Ben.

Can't he?

He takes another drag of his cigarette and looks away. "I don't know what you're talking about," he states and then he waves a hand. "I've already said; I didn't sleep well."

Ben lingers by his side, eyes burning into him. A group of teenagers walk past and laugh at him. "Klaus," says Ben, voice quieter, "if you're... craving again, you know we're all here for you," he states softly and Klaus raises his eyebrows at him. 

"I'm not... 'craving' anything, Ben," he scoffs, and takes a long drag of his smouldering cigarette before dropping it and grinding it into the ground with his toe. Ben catches his gaze and Klaus stares back. He shuffles on the spot, foot scuffing the ground. "I don't like it here," he mutters, fingers flexing and curling into a fist. The door beside him swings open and Klaus watches Diego come out, glance around, and then walk over to him.

"You good, man?" His brother asks, and Klaus pulls out his cigarette packet to light another cigarette. It perches perfectly between his lips and his hand shields it from the wind as he lights it.

"Yup," he mumbles, eyes flicking away. 

"You know, if you need to... talk about anything, we're all ears, Klaus. Y'know, trying that family stuff," he comments, aiming for a light-hearted tone.  Klaus purses his lips, continuing to bounce his leg as he leans back against the wall. He wiggles his fingers in his direction.

"I'm fine," he insists, "I just... I don't know. I need to sleep, or something." He shrugs, a sigh tumbling past his lips as he forces tension out of his shoulders. 

"You sure?" He asks, and Klaus really isn't, but he says he is anyway. He feels like he's going crazy, as if that conspiracy theory of the world being a simulation is real and little glitches are happening, he feels like someone else's thoughts are being slid in with Klaus'. He's just tired, though.

Diego claps a hand on his shoulder. Klaus wonders that if Diego decided to strangle him right then and there, would he be able to fight him off? He never had been able to as kids. The only time he won against Diego was because Diego let him win, and Diego, some boxing vigilante, would be able to keep that same winning streak against Klaus, a recovering addict that weighed about as much as Vanya. But Diego had always had a soft spot for Klaus since they were teenagers, really the only one that ever checked in on Klaus. Diego wouldn't hurt Klaus, despite what his freaky instincts told him.

Klaus pats his hand. "Let's go eat, huh?" He offers with a forced grin, and Diego's gaze lingers on him for a moment longer before he nods and they head back inside.

Klaus doesn't eat much. He's too distracted to and his stomach cramps painfully, so he picks at his salad until they're done and they head back outside, piling into Diego's car. Five, the little shit, zaps into the backseat, eyes just challenging Klaus to fight him. Klaus thinks Five, too, would be able to take him down easily, thirteen year old body and all. Really, Klaus thinks all of his siblings could. The only person he might physically outmatch is Vanya, but if she used her powers then he was done for, and he wouldn't forgive himself if he hurt his sister, so she'd win either way. 

Klaus, with a groan and no motivation to try and fight Five for a seat, so he folds himself into the inch of space between Five's knobbly knees and Diego's seat. It's utterly cramped, his legs and back already protesting, but he simply glares at Five and makes a point of shoving his legs every five seconds.

"Klaus," his brother hisses, "I don't know how it's physically possible for one man to be so annoying."

Klaus shoves his knees and sticks his tongue out. Five kicks him. 

" _Ow_ ," whines Klaus, trying to move back and hitting his head on Diego's chair. "Ben says you're a little bitch."

Ben, laying across the dashboard, raises an eyebrow. "I did?"

Five rolls his eyes. "No he didn't."

"He did. He's right."

Five glares at him and kicks him again, and Klaus growls, shoving his legs roughly. Five holds up a fist warningly, raising his eyebrows in a dare, and Klaus hisses at him like that tabby cat he had befriended in a dumpster hissed at him.

He almost falls when he clambers out of the car, knees protesting almost as much as Five does whenever Klaus does anything. 

"Sweet freedom," Klaus moans, stretching his tortured limbs out. Little dots fly in his vision like blurry flies and he groans, closing his eyes for a final stretch, before going towards the door, following everyone back into the academy. He feels like it's been a way too long day, and he's eager to get some time alone, to drown everything out with some Pink or some Lady Gaga, and for his mind tricks to stop playing. 

"Go watch a sunset or something," he says to Ben, taking the stairs two at a time. "I need some me time."

Ben quirks an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"

Klaus shrugs. "I'm gonna paint my nails or some shit, do a face mask, have a good time."

Ben inclines his head. "Fair enough. I'll be at the fire escape." 

Klaus gives him a two-fingered salute, watching Ben drift off towards the fire escape, and Klaus drifts towards his own bedroom. He finds his Walkman and his earphones eagerly, pulling them on and playing his music. It blares in his ears, echoing along his skull, and he lets it wash over him as he melts into his mattress, bone-deep tired. 

He listens to the music rise, reach up to its peak with instruments soothing his frayed nerves. He listens as the shadow in the corner of his room morphs and twists into a human form, grow and cast across his ceiling as if it's trying to reach for him, and his music, upbeat and playful, distorts to some mournful, sorrowful, anxious melody, violins crying and pianos hyperventilating. Klaus holds his breath, feels his heart beat against his ribcage in time to the pained moans of a guitar, and melts down into it like jelly.  


	5. don't ever tame your demons

When Klaus' powers were first discovered, he hadn't noticed a thing.

He had found it odd that his siblings ignored the other people around the house, but to each their own, he thought. Reginald had caught on quick enough, and it was only then that they started to explore his powers and when everything turned sour. The ghosts, realising Klaus could do more than simply communicate to them - or, at least, Reginald thought so - they turned ugly. Irrational, gory, cruel. His siblings had liked to tease him about it at first; calling him crazy, that he heard and saw things no one else did. When the ghosts became mean, Klaus was scared they would drive him crazy, until the sweet bliss of drugs drowned them out and let him hold onto his last shreds of sanity.

There were some drugs, however, that only worsened it. What was worse than listening to ghosts? Being _paralysed_ and listening to ghosts. Klaus remembered one drug that had rendered him all but paralysed, limbs full of weights that held him down, and the drugs hadn't even quietened the ghosts. He had been paralysed on the floor for hours until it wore of, subject to all of the ghosts hounding him with no chance to try and run away from them.

Klaus felt like that now. When he woke up, he came quickly to the realisation that he couldn't move. He could hardly even turn his head, forced to look around the room as much as he could from his peripheral vision. He tried to wiggle his fingers, tried to sit up, but it simply didn't work. He could feel the air escaping his lungs and he could hardly make his lungs work to pull more back in. He could just about part his lips, but when he tried to make a single, simple sound, all that escaped was a breathy wheeze of air. 

Panic rising in his restrictive ribs, winding them tighter together, pressing them down against his struggling lungs, and Klaus simply tries to will himself to move. His attention was torn away, however, by the realisation that someone was in his room.

It was dark, too, which was unusual for Klaus' room; he hated the dark, and therefore his mass collection of lamps and string lights were always on. The dim light coming from the crack of his door illuminated his room just enough so he could clearly make out the silhouette of a person in his bedroom, standing opposite his bed in the corner of his room. Klaus' throat felt tight with anxiety as he watched the crouching shadow slowly stand, silent as night, unfolding itself to reveal a tall, hunkering form that had to hunch over or else its head would hit the ceiling. It looked as if a tall man had had his ankles and wrists grabbed and stretched out, pulling his body taller than it should be. His hands curled into fists, limp by its knobbly knees, the hallway light glinting off its talon-like claws. It seemed to take up the full length of the room despite looking all skin and bones; incredibly thin, incredibly tall. It breathed heavily, raggedly, much like a lion trying to intimidate an opponent, breathing heavily after one round of fighting and ready for another, air rattling in its throat. 

Klaus stares, wide-eyed, at the person - creature? - in his room, listened as its feet splintered the wood when it stalked forwards. Klaus' heart pounds in his throat, blood rushing in his ears. He knows, without a doubt, that he's about to die, and he can't even yell for Diego or Luther or anyone to help him.

His bed creaks and he watches the creature lower itself onto his bed, crawling up his legs and settling onto them, pinning them down, and as it holds its face inches from Klaus', he smells death as strong as he had in 'Nam.

The creature's head tilts and it smiles wide, rows of sharp teeth splitting the dark void that is its being, and it leans down to tear his throat out.

Klaus throws himself forwards, a scream finally tearing its way out of his mouth, and he launches out of bed, knees slamming onto the ground as he trips over the mess of blankets tangled around his legs. He hurries to turn his lights on before pressing his back against the wall, wide eyes staring at the space he had been on his bed. He gasps for air, hands shaking over his chest, and he looks around rapidly. Save for a very concerned looking Ben, his room was empty of any shadow-like creatures intent on killing him.

"Klaus? Just breathe, Klaus. It was a bad dream, just breathe."

Klaus shakes his head, nails digging into his skin as if he'll be able to push through his body and grab his heart and hold it until it steadies. It wasn't a dream and he knows it. He hardly hears footsteps pound towards his door before it creaks open and Diego, wearing pyjama bottoms and clutching two knives, staggers into his room.

"Klaus?" He blurts, panicked and looking to his bed before realising he's not there but rather curled up on the floor. His eyebrows draw together and he casts a last glance around the bedroom and the window before crouching down in front of him, setting his knives down on the floor. "Klaus? Are you okay? I heard you yell," he states, looking around the room one last time as if expecting to see an intruder. 

Klaus simply shakes his head, dragging air down his tight throat and into his lungs. He claws at his neck as if it'll help him breathe and he pulls his knees up to his chest. Something had almost killed him. Something huge had been in his room, something inhuman, something terrifying. He felt sick. He could still feel its weight on his lower body, pinning him down as if he could move anyway. He could hear the floor splinter under its feet, hear its large shoulders brush the ceiling as it bent at a painful angle to try and fit its huge form in his bedroom. He could feel its breath, warm on his neck, could feel its razor sharp teeth brush over the vulnerable skin of his throat. He could imagine it digging its teeth in, could imagine choking on his own blood in his bed until someone found him hours later. 

Where did it go?

Diego's hands, gentle but firm, reach out to pull Klaus' hands away from his chest. He ducks his head down to catch Klaus' gaze, eyebrows raised. "Breathe, Klaus. Breathe." He makes a show of breathing in and out deeply and slowly, squeezing Klaus' shaking hands. Klaus alternates between trying to copy him and spiralling further into his pit of panic, because he was about to die. He knows what just happened, and he knows he almost died. Had he not shot up when he had, he wouldn't be here still.

Klaus screws his eyes shut, inhaling shakily. He pulls his hands away from Diego and up to rub his eyes, wiping away the few tears that had fell down his cheeks. He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and slumps down, hunching his shoulders. Footsteps echo outside, growing nearer, and the door nudges open to reveal Luther and Allison and, further behind, Vanya. Five's less subtle, flashing into the room with one of Diego's knives.

"We heard a scream," says Five, looking around the room with hawk like eyes. "What happened?"

Diego shakes his head. "I think it was just a bad dream," Diego replies. Klaus shakes his head vehemently.

"No, no, no, some - someone - some _thing_ \- was here," he insists, running his hands down his face. 

"What do you mean _something_ was here, Klaus?" Luther asks him. 

"Klaus, no one was in the room," Ben says. "It was a nightmare."

"I know what I saw!" Klaus yells, glaring at him. 

"Hey, hey," Diego urges says softly, squeezing his arm and drawing his attention back to him. "Look, I'll look around the room, but no one's here anymore, yeah?"

"Well, this was a waste," Five mutters, and he disappears, letting Diego's knife clatter to the ground. And, slowly, everyone else disappears, too, except for Diego who upholds his promise and looks around the room and out the window, down the fire escape. Eventually, though, he's checked everywhere and picked his knife up from the floor.

"Room's safe, bro," Diego tells him. Klaus stays on the floor, claiming this spot where he can see every inch of the room, and he digs his nails into his knees and looks up at Diego.

"I know what I saw, Diego," he swears. Diego lingers, eying him. 

"I trust you, Klaus." He nods his head once, "try and get some more rest, though, yeah? It's the middle of the night." He hesitates for a moment and then keeps going, leaving the room and shutting the door behind him. Klaus inhales shakily, shuffles over to the side and begins to turn on all the lights in his bedroom, and only then does he crawl up onto the bed.

"I know what I saw," he insists to Ben, failing to relax his shaking limbs. "It was there. It was going to kill me."

"You keep saying _it_ ," Ben points out. Klaus nods.

"Yes. It. It wasn't - it wasn't human." Klaus blinks and he brings his hand up to his mouth, absentmindedly picking at his nails. Ben doesn't say anything, simply stares at him until the sun rises. That feeling of being watched doesn't leave him and whenever he thinks he might be safe, something flickers in his periphery.

 

 

 

He sits at the breakfast table and tries to eat. Grace cooked pancakes just how he liked them, but his hand shakes and the pieces almost fall off the fork and he smells burning coming from the kitchen, but no one seems to comment on it. The only person who comments on anything is Five.

"Stop scraping the fork off the plate," Five hisses, "Klaus, or I'll slit your fucking throat."

Klaus startles out from his daze, lifting his gaze from the table to Five. Five's sitting there with a ghostly entourage behind him and a bloody butter knife from his fingers, and Klaus sits a little straighter.

"What?"

"You fucking heard me," Five says, tap, tap, tapping the knife on the table. Klaus blinks and the blood's gone, and everyone's staring at him.

"What-" He swallows. "What did you say?"

"I asked you to stop tapping," he repeats. Five narrows his eyes at him, leering over the table and scrutinising him. 

"Oh. Yeah, yeah," Klaus mutters, and he puts the cutlery down and splays his hands out on the table and then stands. 

"Klaus, are you high?" Luther asks. Klaus blinks owlishly at him.

"What? No. I'm sober, asshole," he says, and he begins to go towards the door. 

"You're acting strange," Luther states. 

"You're acting high," Five adds, jabbing the butter knife in his direction. Klaus can imagine the butter knife arcing through the air with Diego-like precision and thudding into his chest, burrowing past his ribcage, blood spurting past the wounds, and he knows, from all the ghosts that crowd Five, that Five could easily take him out.

But there's no knife in his chest no matter how vividly he imagines it. He blinks himself out of his daze, turns around and leaves without another word. He heads towards the front door, hastily grabbing his jacket and leaving with the feeling of dozens of eyes on his back, and the feeling of imminent danger chasing after him like hounds on his heels.

He weaves his way through the streets. Everything feels detached in such a way it makes him question whether he is actually high or not, but he knows  ~~ _(does he?)_~~ that he's not taken anything, that he's not high. Not willingly, at least. Not consciously. What if someone's been drugging him, though? It's a possibility. 

He eyes the people around him as if they're the culprits. They eye him back just as warily and what if Klaus has done something wrong? People look at him as if he has. What's he done?

At some point, he begins to run. Someone's done something, or doing something, and he isn't sure if it's himself or if it's someone else, but either way something's happening and it's not good and it's following him everywhere. He shoves people out of his way, tripping over his own feet in his haste to run. Something follows him. It runs alongside him from his periphery, a blur of shadows and sharpness with a stench of death, and he keeps running, and running, and running, until it's dark and all the street lights are on and his head spins, his stomach cramps, and he fights the thing on his chest for air.


	6. let the water wash away everything you've become

Things blur together. One minute he's running early in the morning, shoving past people as they go to work, and the next he's on his back in an alleyway at night, something sitting on his chest and crushing his ribs right down against his lungs, his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. When his arms move, they blur with some kind of motion trail, like some slowed down video or some blurred picture. His breath wheezes through his throat and his heart pounds beneath his skin. 

He hauls himself up, uselessly shoving until the thing on his chest disappears without a trace, moving instead as a feeling of unease watching him from the shadows. His vision blurs like water colours all melting together, buildings swirling around him, and he twists himself around just in time for him to throw up. When he tries to stand his thighs throw a protest and he falls back down, legs shaking as if he's not stopped running since he left the Academy. And, Klaus thinks, judging by the stars overhead, maybe he has. But he can't remember any of it.

"Klaus? Can you see me?"

Klaus' eyes flick towards Ben and what a stupid question that is, he thinks. He can always see Ben unless he's taken enough drugs to overdose. He nods his head and Ben sighs in relief, coming over and sinking onto the floor beside him. "You need to just sit for a minute, okay? Just - just take a minute."

Klaus swallows dryly, his throat disguising itself as a scorched desert, and he asks, "where am I?"

Ben stares at him for a moment. "Half way across the city," he states. "You didn't stop running. Klaus-" He inhales, although he doesn't actually need to. "I've been with you almost every second. I've not seen you take anything - what's going on? Are you sick?" 

Klaus thinks back to all the confusion and time gaps in his memory, and he thinks back to the thing in his room. He hasn't taken anything. Not that he's aware of, anyway. But he's been sleeping more recently, leaving himself vulnerable. Maybe someone else is.

"I haven't," says Klaus, shaking his head. "I'm not, I-..." He trails off suddenly and brings a hand up to run it through his hair, pushing it back from his face. "I don't know. I don't remember running."

Ben sighs, concern pinching his features tight. He looks down at his hands and then back up at Klaus. "You need to get to a payphone, then, or manifest me so I can go to one and phone someone for you, okay? It'll take you even longer to get back there."

Klaus drops his head into his hands, fingers curling into strands of his hair. "I can't," he says, and he repeats it again and again and again. He repeats as he lowers himself back onto his side in the alley, pressing his forehead against the cool ground. 

"Klaus, you _need_ to-" Ben says, but the world's already going blessedly dark and cold and Klaus doesn't try to stop it.

 

 

 

When he wakes up again, it's still dark. Arguably darker than it had been the first time, and he still feels so unbelievably exhausted, and Ben's still there.

"This isn't safe, Klaus," he murmurs. "You need to get up."

The simple idea of that is horrendous and something Klaus would much prefer not to do. His feet ache, a steady throb in tune to his pulse that races right up his ankles and his calves. He offers no response to Ben other than a glance. He does look concerned, horribly worried, and he's placed himself uselessly between Klaus and the alleyway entrance.

"I don't want to," Klaus mumbles, the words heavy on his tongue. 

"I don't care," Ben says. "I don't know if you're sick or what's happened, Klaus, but you need to get _home_."

Just because of the utter stress in his voice, Klaus forces himself to sit up. It makes the world spin and his stomach threaten him vaguely, but then he forces himself onto his knees and, with the help of the wall to his right, onto his feet. It hurts, and the ground seems much more comfortable, but Ben tells him there's a payphone nearby and after he phones someone, he can stop. So he hobbles out of the alleyway and onto unfamiliar streets, blinded by traffic lights and car's headlights, and he finds the payphone. He has enough change in his pockets to stuff it into the slot and jab a shaking finger into a familiar pattern of numbers.

It rings once, twice, three times, and Klaus debates just giving up and sitting down when it's finally picked up.

"Klaus?" Of course Diego expects him. He wonders just how many times Klaus has phoned him from some random payphone, in not much of a better state than this one, and of course Diego's accustomed to it.

"Mhmm," Klaus murmurs, then looks at Ben. "I need picked up." 

Diego sighs, and he thinks he can hear the disappointment in it. "Where are you?" 

Ben, who's obviously scouted out the entire place, gives him an address that Klaus repeats. "Where the hell is that?" Diego mutters. Klaus shrugs.

"Dunno. Far, apparently."

"Give me a while," Diego says. "Just stay where you are."

"Didn't plan on moving," Klaus mumbles, then hangs up. He takes a few steps back until he hits a wall, and he lets himself slide down it, blessedly giving his legs another break. He clasps his hands together and rests his cheek against them, eyes fluttering closed. Ben says something to him that Klaus doesn't really care about, but he lets him ramble on until a car slows to a halt in front of him. A door groans open and footsteps come up to him, and Diego's there, kneeling down and shaking him.

"Come on, bro," he says, looking Klaus, pale and sweating, up and down. He sighs and Klaus grips his arms tightly, using him to help himself stand.

"Didn't take anything," he mutters, crawling into the passengers seat. 

"What?"

"Not high. I didn't take anything," he repeats, cracking his eyes open to glance briefly at Diego as he gets into the driver's seat, door thudding closed behind him. Diego eyes him.

"You look like shit."

"Feel like it, too."

"What happened, then?" Diego asks. "You've been gone the entire day." Klaus looks at the clock on the dashboard. Past two in the morning, it tells him, and he grimaces.

"Dunno," Klaus admits, shrugging lazily. "Ben says... what did you say, Ben?" He cranes his neck to look at Ben in the backseat, his face solemn.

"You just kept running," he says. "You only stopped because you collapsed. Whenever I tried to talk to you, you said someone was trying to kill you."

"Huh," Klaus hums, slumping. It makes sense, he thinks, because if someone was trying to kill him he probably would have done just that and not stopped running. 

"What's Ben say?" Diego asks, smoothly gliding the car away from the pavement and down the road.

"I was just running," he reiterates. "Kept running. Collapsed. Called you." 

Diego gives him an odd look. "And why were you running?"

"Someone's trying to kill me."

The odd look on his face doesn't leave. "Has someone tried to?" He asks, voice low.

"No one's trying to kill you, Klaus," Ben states. "That's just what you _said_."

"Well, I probably said it for a _reason_ ," Klaus responds pointedly. 

"What is it?" Diego asks.

"Ben says no one's trying to kill me, I just said that. I wouldn't have just said that and ran for hours on end," he scoffs. And plus, something clearly tried to kill him that morning. Something flickers in his peripheral and he turns to look out the window at an empty street. He looks forwards again and standing in the middle of the road is that same tall figure, and his heart jumps. He reaches out, grabbing the steering wheel from Diego and yanking it aside. They swerve around the figure, and the figure doesn't move as Diego takes back the wheel and hurries to straighten the car out.

"What the fuck, Klaus!" Diego yells, hands curling around the steering wheel with pale knuckles. "What the fuck?"

"There was something on the fucking road!" Klaus defends.

"No there wasn't! Just-" He takes a deep breath, steadying himself. "I didn't see anything. It was probably a ghost, Klaus."

Klaus looks at Ben. Ben shakes his head numbly. 

"There was!" Klaus insists, folding his arms across his chest before dragging his hands down his face. "Christ, whatever."

"Have you seriously not taken anything?" Diego asks, scrutinizing him. Klaus glares at him.

"No, asshole." He looks out the window and neither of them say anything as Diego drives them back to the academy. He marches Klaus, like a prisoner, into the living room and to the sight of his tired siblings, and Klaus stares at them all before turning back to Diego.

"What's this?" He asks. "I'm tired."

"We need to talk, Klaus," says Luther, standing up. Klaus slides past him and lets himself fall onto the couch, sprawling out across from it. Directing it to Diego, Luther asks, "is he high?"

"He says he didn't take anything," Diego says dubiously. Klaus resists the urge to flip him off. Instead, he curls his hands into fists and focuses on Ben until he hears his footsteps and a small gasp announcing his entrance to the realm of the living.

"He didn't take anything," Ben repeats. "I was with him. He's still sober."

"Then why did he run off?" Allison asks. Ben gestures to Klaus.

"Ask him. He's not been coherent before now."

Klaus rolls his eyes. "Five was going to kill me," he states.

"And when did I say that?" Five scoffs. 

"Breakfast," Klaus states. "This morning. Yesterday, technically."

"I asked you to stop tapping your fork-"

"Or you'd slit my throat, yes, I know, I was there."

"Five didn't say that, Klaus," murmurs Ben. 

"He said it twice. I clearly heard him."

"I might think you're a damn idiot, but I didn't say I would kill you."

Klaus hums sceptically, tries to push down the rising fear. They're all conspiring against him. They're all backing Five up - even _Ben_ \- to lull himself into a false sense of security. He shakily stands up, avoiding their gaze. "This has been lovely. I'm going to bed now," he states, heading for the door. Luther slides in front of him and Klaus flinches and takes a step back. He curls his hands into fists, staring at everyone. "Let me out," he says, and he fails at keeping his voice strong and cold.

"We need to talk, sit down, Klaus." Luther looks pointedly towards the chair behind him and Klaus grits his teeth. He can remember the feel of Luther's hand around his throat, crushing, lifting him off the floor and sliding him up the pillar just to his right. Luther wouldn't need to break a sweat to kill him. He'd be dead before he even realised what was happening.

Klaus bites his lip, blood roaring in his ears, and he takes a step back. He eyes Five, able to blink in and out of space, and he eyes Diego, able to arc a knife through the air, Luther, able to crush his bones into dust, and Allison able to make him complacent, trapped in his own body, and Vanya able to bring the house down on him.

Klaus runs. He knows he's fast and slippy, one of the traits he's relied on for his life on the streets. He tries to slide past Luther but is caught by an arm across his chest and held against Luther, and he kicks out, arms pinned to his side.

"Let me go! Let me go! Fuck you! Let me fucking go!" He yells, voice cracking, legs thrashing, and the building shakes, smoke creeping into Klaus' nose, and the arms around him are Jackson's, pulling him away from Dave's body in the midst of bombs and gunfire, bullets whizzing inches from him, and he screams.


	7. today is gone

"So, you're telling me that you've never smoked before? Like, never?" Klaus' eyes slide over to Dave, a sly grin spreading his face. Dave chuckles, low and light, and he shakes his head.

"Cigarettes? Yeah. That? No. My mama raised me better than that." He offers a joking grin of his own and Klaus snorts. He sticks his tongue out, plastering the skin of his blunt together, and then he eyes it carefully. Then he holds it between two fingers, and raises a lighter to the other end. It catches quickly and he takes a deep inhale, sucking smoke deep into his lungs, and then holds it out to Dave, eyebrows wiggling. 

"Only a little bit of weed, Davey," he coos. "One of these won't get you high unless you're a light weight."

Dave eyes the blunt, sighs, and reaches to take it. Klaus grins, shuffling closer, hip to hip, scrutinising him as he lifts it to his lips. He inhales, then coughs sharply, face pinched, and waves his hand for Klaus to take the blunt.

"How do you not cough?" He grunts between coughs, fist hovering over his mouth. 

"Practice makes perfect, dear. You should have seen me the first time I did it; tears, wheezing, the lot. Should have seen the first time I tried to roll my own blunt," he shakes his head in disappointment. "Not my finest piece of work, I admit."

Dave snorts. "Look at you now, then," he jokes, and Klaus grins, lifting the blunt up. 

"A true masterpiece," he hums. He takes another drag. They're on leave again, though only for a few more days. It's dark and he and Dave had walked out of the village for some peace, sitting on the ground and looking out at the stars. Taylor had given him some weed from wherever he had gotten it from, and he'd smoked one blunt with him earlier before saving the rest to make now. 

It is peaceful. There's a slight chill in the air, pleasantly so compared to the heat of the day, and the sky is clear, painted deep navy blue, stars splattered across it like flicks of paint. With a grunt, Klaus lays down in the grass that tickles his cheeks and his neck. After a moment, Dave joins him, laying down by his side, legs stretched out. 

"You have to trust them," Dave says, somewhat abruptly. Klaus hums, eyebrows knitting together in confusion. He turns his head to face him. 

"What do you mean? You know I trust everyone in our division. I trust them with my life," he states. 

"Not them, Klaus. Your family."

Klaus sits up. "What do you mean?" 

Dave sits up. He reaches a hand out to cup his cheek ever so gently and Klaus closes his eyes, turning his face into his hand. "You're scared, and I can't help you. You need to trust your family." 

Klaus blinks through his confusion. His family. He remembers. Panic squeezes his ribs tightly. Dave squeezes his cheek. "No," he says, shaking his head. "No, they - they're trying to hurt me, Dave. I know they are."

"They're not Klaus," Dave insists. "They aren't."

Klaus' fingers curl into a fist, crushing the blunt and letting it litter down onto the ground like dust. He feels like he's going crazy. He feels like reality is slipping through his fingers and he doesn't know why. It's as if he's high, but at least then he knew he was high. All he knows now is that he's in danger and not even Ben knows what's going on with him. 

"Don't leave me," he pleads, hand lifting up to curl around Dave's. Dave's eyes look glossy, distant. "I - let me stay here. Don't let me go." He doesn't want to go. One minute he's in one place and the next moment he'll be somewhere else entirely. He wants to ground himself in this moment, wherever he might be. He knows, logically, he isn't in Vietnam, but he doesn't know where else he is.

"Trust them, Klaus," Dave says, and as he speaks blood bubbles up past his lips. Klaus' eyes widen and he sits up, and his nostrils burn from smoke, his ears ring from explosions. Dave's blood is slick beneath his hands, thick, hot, oozing with each weakening heartbeat. They're on the battlefield and had it not been for Klaus' hand over his, it would have fallen from his cheek. 

"Dave - Dave, no, no, no, please." His voice catches in his throat, raspy and rough, and as something whizzes over his head and shakes the ground Klaus presses himself flat into the dirt, head curling into the crook of Dave's bloody neck. His fingers scratch the hard floor beneath him before traversing upwards to clamp over his ears, fingertips curling into his hair. 

"We didn't do anything!" 

"It's got to be a bad trip - you can't tell me he's sober right now. You need to do a drug test o

"Lift him up, dear, he's gotten too tall for me to carry. I will do a blood test for him once he's settled in the infirmary."

Hazel's arms slip beneath him, thick and muscular, familiar from the time he'd thrown him over his shoulder to carry him from the car to the motel room when he and Cha-Cha had kidnapped him, and of course they're back. Or maybe he never got out. But then he never would have met Dave, and he knows for certain that Dave is real. He can't bring himself to fight. He's sure he'll be somewhere else within two minutes anyway.

"At least he stopped screaming," someone utters, voice soft and sad. 

"If he was struggling he should have come to us," someone else says, their voice something stern and firm but undeniably sad, almost guilty. "He knew he could come to us if he was thinking of relapsing."

Had he relapsed? He had no idea anymore. He thought he hadn't, and he thought that Ben said he hadn't, but maybe he had. He relapses every time he tries to get sober. He probably did relapse. Maybe he OD'd, too. He probably did. It makes sense. 

He feels something soft beneath him. He doesn't open his eyes. He doesn't want to know where he is. Soft, small hands stroke his head, brush his hair aside, and then rub the back of his hand. 

"What has he been saying?"

Someone swallows. "He left at breakfast. Phoned me half way across the city and said that someone was trying to kill him. Ben said no one was. Said he didn't take anything either, but I don't know."

"He said someone was trying to kill him?"

"Mhmm. I don't know what that means."

Something nicks his hand, sharp and stabbing. Maybe he's in a hospital. He tends to end up in them a lot, though he always ran out as soon as he could. Had they wanted him to stay, they should have locked the windows. 

"He's been acting weird for days," someone says. Are they talking about him? Everyone is. 

"How's the blood test?"

"Give it a minute, dear. It takes time."

"He said I threatened to slit his throat," someone scoffs. "He's annoying as fuck, but I didn't say that."

"I don't know what's gotten into him. He's got to have relapsed."

"Klaus?"

He finds no energy to confront whatever illusion he's in this time, and so he keeps his eyes firmly shut, makes not a sound, and lets their chatter wash over him. Instead, he thinks of how his name isn't really Klaus, but Four. He wonders if there was ever a real order to the way in which Reginald named them, numbered them. Had he been numbered One would he behave like Luther had? He wonders what life might have been like had his powers been something else entirely. Elements? Mind reading? Maybe he wouldn't have gone crazy, then.

"He's negative for drugs. There isn't any in his system."

Are they still talking about him? If so, then that's a relief. 

"Then what's wrong with him?"

"Maybe he's ill."

"He only looked ill when I found him, and he implied he had been running all day."

"All day?"

"Yeah. Like, non stop, I think. Since he left. I don't know how else he would get that far away without driving or sprinting, and he can't drive, nor does he have money for a cab."

"Christ," someone mutters.

"You ought to let him rest now. You can stay, but do let him rest."

"We need to know-"

"She's right."

"Fine."

Manicured nails massage his scalp, gently, fondly. He catches a whiff of perfume, perfume he's known for years, and he feels like a child again. He hears footsteps drift away, shuffle far from him, and he's sure it's just himself and Grace. He knows it's Grace. He forces his eyes open. Sure enough, she stands there in front of him, offering a soft smile as she continues to smooth his hair down. 

"Mom," he whispers, and he reaches a hand up. She catches it in her own and he clutches it, pulling her close so he can rest his cheek against her hand, eyes closing again. He squeezes her hand hard, as hard as he can, and she doesn't flinch. "I don't know what's happening," he tells her. She leans in close, her free hand raising to stroke his other cheek. 

"We're here to help you, dear," she says. 

"Is this real?" He asks. 

"Of course it is, silly. Try and get some rest. You're extremely dehydrated, Klaus."

Klaus shakes his head vehemently. "No. No. Everything changes. I'll go somewhere else if I fall asleep. I can't."

"You'll be here when you wake up, dear. And so will I. I promise." She squeezes his hand and Klaus' eyes screw shut painfully tight. She might promise that, but she can't control it. But she doesn't let go of his hand, nor does she stop running her thumb over his cheek, and he's exhausted. He lets go.

 

 

 

"What does that even mean?" 

"That's what he said to me, dear. I'm afraid he might be in a state of psychosis. With his past habits, it's a possibility; although typically, if it were to be triggered by his drug use, it should have happened while he was still abusing rather than now. I'm afraid he's been pushed too much, perhaps, or too stressed."

"He's, what, schizophrenic, then?"

"Dear, that's not what I said."

"No, no. That's understandable," says someone. He sounds like Five. "Nearly two decades of drug abuse on top of childhood trauma - and whatever happened when he time-travelled - it wouldn't be that surprising."

"He time travelled? How?"

He realises Grace's hand is still in his, and that he's awake, and that he knows that it's Grace's hand in his. He pries his eyes open. Grace is standing by his bedside still. 

"When Hazel and Cha-Cha kidnapped him," says Five.

"He told me he fought in a war," murmurs Diego. "He lost someone and he wanted to get sober to see him."

"He fought in a war?"

He can smell napalm. It burns his nostrils so fiercely he jerks his head back. "Don't," he blurts, word torn from his mouth. 

"Klaus? Shit, are you okay?"

"Don't talk about it," he states. He brings his free hand to rub furiously at his nose to try and dislodge the smell. He doesn't want to go back. He's sure this is real, and he wants to stay with reality. 

"Okay, okay, that's fine," Diego says, and he's close, close enough to rest his hands on his shoulders, heavy and warm. "We won't talk about it. How are you feeling?"

He realises he's still staring at the ceiling and he blinks away the image of trees and blinding sun. Focuses on Diego and Grace's hands. He swallows. "Is this real?" He asks.

There's a moment of silence and he turns to look at Diego. "Yeah," Diego croaks, "this is real, Klaus. Promise."

"Good," Klaus breathes. He slumps in the bed.

"Do you know where you are?" Diego asks.

"Academy," Klaus answers. 

"Do you know what happened before that?" Klaus presses his lips together. 

"Ran away at breakfast," he mutters. "Passed out. Phoned you. Came home." He pauses. "Everything changed. Now I'm here."

"What do you mean 'everything changed', Klaus?" Luther asks, prowling closer.

"Was in Vietnam again," he murmurs. There had been explosions, and then there had been Dave, and then he had died again. He always dies. 

"Klaus." Someone touches his arm and he startles. Five's there, too, and Vanya and Allison are close, and he's backed into a corner and he needs to  _get out._ His heart pounds furiously beneath his chest and he shakes, letting go of Grace's hand and shrugging off Diego's, sitting up. He spots an IV that Grace must have slotted into him - dehydrated, he remembers - and he struggles to take it out. Hands close over his, pulling them away. 

"I'll get it, dear," Grace tells him, reaching for it.

"What are you doing?" Luther asks. 

"I - I need to go," Klaus says. He doesn't blink as Grace gently removes the IV from his skin, but he does immediately go to stand up instead. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he twitches away from unwelcome hands, his teeth grinding together absently and cheeks twitching, lips pulling away from his teeth like a repetitive tic. 

"Klaus, please, sit down," Allison pleads softly. Klaus weaves his way between them all, sliding out of the door on bare feet and into the hallway, eyes bouncing around the place. He ought to turn around and reach out for his family, with this moment of clarity, but the fear of this slipping between his fingers tells him to move, to do something, anything. He grinds his teeth. He doesn't know where to go. He doesn't know what to do. 

"Klaus," Five says, by his side. He doesn't reach to touch him but his face morphs with concern, tries to be something friendly and reassuring. "Let's sit down. Just sit down for a while."

Klaus nods his head. Slowly, he slides down until he's sitting on the floor, and Five joins him, sitting cross-legged opposite him. He doesn't say anything, just watching him carefully, with eyes like a hawk's. Klaus meets his eyes, scared that if he looks anywhere else that another place might creep up on him.

"I don't know what's happening," Klaus admits quietly. Five bobs his head slightly. 

"You just need to trust us, Klaus," Five says. "We're not here to hurt you. I came back to help you all. Do you trust me?"

Klaus stares at him. Does he? Does he trust Five? He needs to trust someone. Five doesn't break eye contact, keeps his eyebrows raised slightly, lips parted, hands clasped. Then he unclasps his hands and offers one out, palm facing upwards. 

Klaus reaches out to take his hand, nodding. "I trust you, Five."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments; I love hearing them!


	8. on your knees

Five guides him into the living room. The fire's lit, roaring away by the wall, warming his bones. He can't tear his eyes away from it for a few moments. He sits down and Five sits next to him, the chair creaking as he does so. He wonders, briefly, where everyone else is, but he prefers this; prefers only having one person around him rather than being crowded, like some feral animal. Five is quiet, non-prying, and he's smart. He seems to understand whatever this situation is better than the others, better than himself. He doesn't seem to mind when Klaus chews at his nails, doesn't pay much attention to when his eyes flick to the doors. Klaus watches the flames in the fireplace dance around one another and he remembers all the discos in Vietnam. 

Klaus had liked the music. He can hear it now, flicking through his mind. Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin. He wasn't necessarily a good dancer, but only Mark ever had been. No one else in the division had been any good at dancing. Perhaps Timothy, too. Dave had been awful. Klaus had poked fun at him for it.

"And what do you call that move, then?" Dave laughs, eyebrows raised, eying him up and down.

"What? This?" His arms bounce, fists swinging up above his head and down to his hips, his head tipping side to side. "I call it a masterpiece." 

Dave snorts, his cheeks flushed from alcohol. "It's not fair to judge me when you call that a masterpiece," he says. Klaus shrugs.

"What can I say? I'm just perfect in every way - especially dancing," grins Klaus. He reaches out, hands searching for Dave's, and he pulls him right into the dance floor, swinging their arms as they go. "Just let go, Dave-o." He lets go of his hands to sway them above his head, swinging his hips, eyes fluttering closed. Slowly, his hands descend, trailing down his neck and his shoulders, his chest and his stomach. "Just feel the music in your body, Dave."

Dave's laugh echoes, soft and hearty, and he comes close, swaying. "Feel it?" He repeats. Klaus snickers, nodding his head.

"Yeah, yeah. The vibes, Dave. Feel the vibes!" He lifts one hand, pointing a finger upwards, and he begins to hum to the music, tapping his foot. " _Oh please, say to me_..."

"Oh, so you're a singer now, too?" Dave laughs, reaching out to grab Klaus' lifted hand and tug him forwards. Klaus' grin spreads his lips wide. 

"Of course I am," he says, and begins to hum again. " _You'll let me be your man..._ "

He spins, his shoes clicking on the floorboards, and Dave's hand ghosts over his back as he turns. He catches him, forcing him to face him once more, and Klaus intertwines their fingers and opens his eyes.

He's staring at fire, crackling away in the fireplace in the Academy's living room. Both his hands are clasped together and his chin rests atop them, and he's humming, whispering that same song. The smile that he feels on his lips drops, reality filtering through, unwelcome, biting, cruel. 

"Where were you?"

Five's beside him. Klaus spares him only a brief glance, eyes flicking there and back before closing. "Dancing," he murmurs. He turns towards the fire and hopes that the flames will take him away again. 

"We believe that you should go on medication, Klaus," says Five. Klaus' eyes slide over to him, narrow.

"I'm sober."

"Not recreational drugs, Klaus. Medicine. Anti-psychotics. They ought to help you."

Klaus scrutinises him. He's only ever been prescribed medicine when he was young, ill. And he had worked hard to get sober. If he was going to go back onto drugs, he might as well just go out and search for a dealer. 

"I don't need more drugs," he scoffs, sitting upright. 

"It's not the same situation, Klaus," says Five, eying him. 

Five's smart. Smarter than the lot of them, at least. He can twist words, can spin lies into truths. He might as well be Allison, with her mind-altering powers. Maybe they already have him on drugs. He looks at the door. "Where's everyone else?" He asks, swallowing down the rising panic in his throat.

"I said that it wouldn't be a good idea to crowd you again," states Five. "Do you know what psychosis is, Klaus?"

He feels like he's heard of the word before. It draws forth negative synonyms. Things people don't want to associate themselves with. Klaus stands up. "I'm going to sleep," he lies, waving a hand in Five's direction and heading for the door. Five flashes in front of him and he startles, staggering backwards. 

"This is serious, Klaus. We need to talk. I need to know you understand what's going on," he insists. Klaus lifts his gaze from Five and he spots Diego peering out at him from the kitchen doorway. He can see Luther behind him. He looks back at Five and smiles, setting a hand on his shoulder.

"I know, I know. But right now I need a nap. How about you," he nudges him slightly, "focus on those meds, yeah? They're important, and I'll go nap. I'll just be upstairs, you know." He slides around him, into the corridor and up the stairs, taking them two at a time. 

"Klaus," Five sighs behind him. Klaus ignores him, hurrying along the corridors and into his bedroom. He makes to slam his door shut but hesitates and does so slowly, gently instead. Words filter through his mind with connections to one another that he can't make. All pinned up on a board and he stands with red string in his hands, a big ball of it, and he has no idea where to start, what to connect, what to do. And there's plenty of pieces to connect. He has stacks upon stacks of words and pictures, some litter the floor, and he trips over them and they all scatter like ash, spread out around this dark room that he's trapped in, mess up whatever order they might have been in. Some of them aren't even related and have no place in being taped and strung up into this web, but he tries to fit them in either way. 

He sits down, and his hands find themselves in his hair. He's home, he knows. In the Academy, surrounded by his family. But he feels as if a filter has been placed over his vision, distorting everything as it enters his mind. Or perhaps he feels he's underwater, or like there's a perfectly clean glass wall between himself and everyone else. He feels as if there is a mirror, and he's somehow gotten through to the other side of it where everything is just slightly not right. 

He tries to make a timeline of recent events. He finds that he cannot do it. He finds that these walls around him grow darker, and they morph into cold grey, hard, walls that echo  _please, dad, I'll be good, let me out, please, I'm not scared, please._

Klaus wonders if there was a time that he was ever not scared. He curls his hands around his ears and grinds his teeth to stop himself from screaming. 

Klaus wonders what Reginald might say should he see him now. Just as terrified of that mausoleum as he was then. Unless now is then, in which case he never left. He might have conjured up a whole life, a whole fantasy, a whole charade during one of those weekends of training. As real as that life might have seemed, these mausoleum walls and scratch marks are just as real as ever. He can pound his fists against the walls and they budge not an inch, nor flicker or waver like a hologram, but his fists echo above the moans and the yells of the dead and moonlight filters in through the bars crossed over the windows he had once tried to smash his way out of. 

He never told them his name. He never once told the ghosts his name, and somehow they all know it. Can word spread between ghosts? Like gossip? Or do they all just know who he is. He supposes they all probably know about him. 

He wonders, not for the first time, what death might be like. He only has Ben to go by for that, unless he is thirteen and Ben is yet to be dead. Maybe it is like walking in a storm at night; dark, pitch black, freezing, whole body heavy, a simple burden. Everything's cold and dark and heavy. And then Klaus might be there, like some kind of beacon, a shelter from the wind and the snow, a place for hope. Of course they would all flood to him then, only to find a locked door and boarded windows and peeling paint.

He stands up, dust falling from the creases of his clothes, and there's a window without bars. It's a picture that adds to the stack of unrelated information in his mind. He rushes for it, his nails scratching along its side, top, bottom. He looks for a latch, for a weak spot, tugging and tugging and tugging. It doesn't budge. He throws his shoulder against it, again and again. A ghost touches him. Nails ragged, a stench of decay, rotting flesh, moans falling from the depth of their throat, and he twitches away, limbs flailing, dancing ungracefully. He shoves, lashes out, yells, pleads for Reginald to let him out.

He sinks to the floor, deflated like a balloon. He digs his nails into things; wall, floor, skin. Drags them across and up, follows shoulders and collar bones, to feel a pinch of something. 

They all moan his name like some twisted choir. Unlike all the music at the discos, unlike when he could dance around Dave, full of life and weightless. 

He turns to the window. Outside, a village burns bright. Heavy smoke. The mausoleum inside is cold. Hands settle on him. He doesn't know which direction to go in. To follow corpses or smoke or hands? None feel particularly solid, particularly real. Perhaps he's adrift in a dream, although he never has particularly good dreams. 

A hand turns his face. He lets it. A man stares at him. It's not Dave, but he touches his cheek in a similar fashion. If he tries, he could probably pretend it is Dave. Although Dave is paler than this man, even tanned from the Vietnam sun, and he has no scar through his eyebrow, and when he speaks this man doesn't have that same lilt to his voice that Dave does. But he can pretend. 

He tries to lift a hand and finds it doesn't respond. He tries again and doesn't realise when it does work, startling to find he can feel another hand beneath his. His breath hitches. He curls his fingers around this man's, and smiles. 

"Luther," says Not-Dave, and although he looks right at him, Klaus knows he isn't talking to him; his name isn't Luther. He might have known a Luther once, but not now, not here. "Lift him. Mom'll need to do stitches." A man, large, drifts close, his face pinched, frowning. He comes close, urging the first man to shuffle slightly aside so he can lean down and hook his arms beneath the crook of his knees. His head falls back, limp like a ragdoll, and there's a sudden pain that tugs at his arms and his shoulders and it makes him groan. 

He thinks of dancing again. He can't get that song out of his head. The Beatles, he remembers. He thinks it's called  _I Want To Hold Your Hand._ Dave had certainly enjoyed it, had memorised the lyrics and used to sing it when they marched and, later on, in the dark of night when they were along, he would murmur the words in the shell of his ear so intimately, and he'd reach out to take his hand with a cheesy grin. He liked Elvis, too. Likes. He used to sing _Hound Dog_ and _There'll Be Peace In The Valley_. Grass tickles his ankles, licks at his calves, and a bead of sweat rolls down his neck. Light flashes over head, sunlight filtering between the leaves of towering trees.

"Please, God, let this boy find some tune," Klaus groans, and people laugh.

"I've already found it," says Dave, rifle in hand. Klaus shoots him a sceptical look. 

"Sure, I'm sure you have," he murmurs, then grins, wide-lipped. "I kid, I kid. Sing me a song, then." He reaches out to nudge him with the butt of his rifle and Dave rolls his eyes playfully. But here he can remember that Dave is dead, the memory heavy and vivid behind his eyes, ringing in his ears. He doesn't think he ever got around to telling him that he wasn't actually that bad a singer. He asked him to sing to him multiple times, in those dark nights, but he never felt for his hand and looked him in the eyes and assured him he was joking.

He must have known, though. He must have. 

"What are you laughing at?" Someone asks him. He blinks. Wades out of the thick of his mind and into the infirmary of the Umbrella Academy, with its florescent, harsh lighting.

"He wasn't actually a bad singer," he mumbles. His arms hurt. He looks down and, nearly blending in with the pale bedsheets, are his arms, a mess of pale skin, pink lines, and odd stitches. He can feel them all the way up to his shoulders. 

"Klaus?" He blinks. Lets his gaze roll to the side. Oddly concerned siblings stand around him, and he wonders how he got in bed. He was sure he was being carried a moment prior. 

"Right here," he says, waving a hand. 

"With us?" Five asks. He pushes himself to the forefront of the crowd, like some tiny knight in shining armour. 

"Where else would I be?" Klaus jokes, and he looks around. He says that with the knowledge that he has no idea where he was moments ago, and with the knowledge that he won't know where he is in a handful of moments. "Why do I have stitches?" He asks instead. Everyone's taken a step back. Five must have done that, he thinks. 

"You scratched yourself. Bad," says Diego. Klaus eyes his arms. They almost match knife wounds, he thinks. Nonetheless, he traces them with his fingertips and catches a glimpse of dried blood beneath his nails. 

"Huh," he says. "I didn't notice."

"Of course you didn't," someone scoffs. Klaus can't pinpoint who it is. He can't argue with it, either. 

"You're scaring us," murmurs Vanya, her voice soft and quiet, wobbling like a boat on waves. He peers over at her, standing just behind Five and beside Allison. 

"I've not done anything," Klaus replies. How can he scare them when they're all conspiring on him? When he's the one with gaps in his memories and being thrown between people and times and being expected to trust it as it comes. Does he trust this as reality, or does he trust the whizzing of shells and gunfire? 

Maybe he just doesn't trust any of it.

He seeks out Five. Hadn't he said something about trust? He can't remember it, but he feels it in his gut. Or perhaps it's another lie. Each wave of paranoia and anxiety is something new and sudden, almost painful, and he turns his head away from them in the bed and looks at his arms. Scratching was a bad habit he caught years ago, something that always came with withdrawals and cravings and became, soon, a fall back. They hurt if he tugs them sharply, but if he does it slowly, gradually, no pain builds up, nothing happens. He decides that's probably not a good thing.

"We tried to talk earlier," he says, swallows, turns to look at Five. "Didn't we?"

"Yes," Five nods, "we did. And you went upstairs." Klaus bobs his head in a nod. That sounds right.

"What were we talking about?" He feels that it's important. Something tells him it is. His instincts tell him it's all still a lie, and he throws a brief glance to the door. Five catches it and gravitates closer to pull his attention back onto him.

"Psychosis, Klaus. Do you know what that is?" He asks. Klaus presses his lips together. He shrugs half heartedly. Possibly. He watches Ben fade into life, standing right beside Five, and relief floods his face when he notices Klaus' eyes focusing on him. 

"Please talk to them, Klaus," he pleads, and he has that same voice he uses when he's in hospital after an overdose. Klaus' eyebrows furrow. Blood slips past Ben's lips, cascading down his chin and dripping to the floor. He feels as if he hasn't seen Ben in ages, and he wonders why he didn't notice before. Ben never leaves his side. He should have noticed. The blood keeps spilling, keeps coming, growing a puddle on the floor, and it doesn't stop. 

Someone grabs his arm and shakes him. He blinks out of his daze, looking up at Five, suddenly much closer than before, grabbing his arm. "What?" He asks. 

"Focus on me, Klaus," he tells him. Klaus stares at him. His lips move, no words coming out, and he reaches forwards to grab Five by the shoulders and yank him forwards. Luther steps forwards as if expecting Klaus to hurt him, but Five holds a hand up in his direction. 

"Make them leave," Klaus whispers by his ear. Between the drip-drip-drip of Ben's blood gradually flooding the floor and the scrutiny from his siblings, he can feel his heart rate picking up, feel his limbs become more fidgety. Five eyes him for a moment before turning around, nodding at everyone.

"Give us a minute," he says, voice calm and smooth. For a moment, everyone hesitates. Diego looks pained. Slowly, they filter out of the room, leaving the door ajar behind them. Only when he couldn't hear their footsteps did he look back at Five. 

"You can trust them too, you know," Five says, quirking an eyebrow at him. Klaus shakes his head, teeth grinding together momentarily. "Why not?" Five asks, and he sounds genuinely curious. Klaus huffs out a breath.

" _Because_ ," he says, and he curls his hands into fists in the bedsheets beneath him. "They're all acting like I'm doing something wrong. I've not done anything. And all of a sudden I have gaps in my memory and I'm all cut up and I _know_ someone's trying to hurt me, Five, I've seen it multiple times, and _I_ didn't take anything so someone else must be - be drugging me, or something." He blurts it all out in a rush, words almost tripping over one another in the hurry to get off his tongue. His teeth grind together, his eyes flick to the door, and then he looks back to Five, watching him with a calm expression. He fears that Five lied to him and he's prying into his thoughts, into what he knows - does he know something? Is this what it's about? Information? - so he can gage where he is, or something like that, but he forces himself to meet Five's eyes. He's been nothing but honest, so Five has no reason to disagree with him.

Five inhales slowly and then sits on the bed beside Klaus. "You've been through a lot recently, Klaus," he begins, his voice eerily soft that makes Klaus' guard go up instantly. "With your past drug use, the possibility of it affecting your mental health. Can you agree with that?" He asks. Klaus scrutinises him. But he knows well enough about that - rehab and AA meetings and random bouts of counselling that came with that cemented a link between drug use and mental health in his mind. Obviously, he understand that, so he nods. "And you spent ten months in Vietnam, right?" Napalm stings his throat. His ears ring. He nods. "And God knows Reginald fucked us all up, huh?" He nods again, with a grimace this time.

"What's your point, Five?" He asks, eyes flicking aside, shuffling with discomfort. 

"Grace thinks that you're in a psychotic episode. I think there's a possibility you have PTSD on top of that," says Five, raising an eyebrow. Klaus remembers a time when Five was carefree, joking. He used to be mischievous. They had been chaotic when they were younger. Five thoroughly enjoyed prank wars more than he ever let on. He used to enjoy Klaus' jokes, too. He wonders if he still makes witty comments when fighting bank robbers. Does he still tease them, still switch their guns to staplers? Does he still teleport all around the room, in and out of the building, infuriating them all? What did he do for forty years in the apocalypse?

A hand grabs his jaw and squeezes until he blinks. It almost hurts. Almost. Five's right there, staring into his eyes, and Klaus sits up a little. "Hey, Five," he greets with a smile. "Legit, I was just thinking about you, bro. Good timing. But that's your thing, I guess," he snickers.

Five deflates slightly. "Psychosis, Klaus. Remember?" He asks, eyebrows raised. Klaus blinks. Had they been talking? Five had disappeared years ago. His eyes narrow. Five had returned a while ago. Nowadays he focused mainly on helping Vanya. Vanya had powers, now. He blinks. Had he forgotten? His mind feels scattered. He looks for the paper labelled 'psychosis' in his room of messy paper and loose red string, and he tries to follow it back. 

"Grace thinks I have that," he says, finally. At least Five seems to brighten up slightly. 

"Yes, good. Which means you might be struggling to perceive reality correctly right now, huh?" He says. Klaus presses his lips together. Reality seems clear to him. Danger, whether it's in the form of an inhuman creature or Vietnam or his own siblings, and the need to be safe. That was the most important thing, really. Other things could wait until he was safe. 

"I'm fine," he replies. "I already told you everything. I'm fine up there-" He taps his head and frowns at the sight of stitches on his arms. "Sober and everything, Five. I know what's happening, and I - I need to go, now." He shakes his head, moves to stand up. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and Five grabs his wrist.

"You trust me, don't you?" He asks. Klaus stares at him. His stomach rolls as if he's nauseous and he swallows heavily.

"Yes," he finally says. 

"Then stay here tonight. Wait until Grace has medicine so we can see if it helps, okay? And if it doesn't, then I'll help you with whatever you need. Deal?" He offers. Klaus stares at him. 

"I need a bath," he utters. Five nods. 

"I'm not saying you can't take a bath, Klaus. But stay here tonight."

Klaus looks away. "Will you stay in my room?" He asks. Five doesn't question him, but simply nods. 

"If it helps," he replies. Klaus lets out a slow breath.

"Fine. Alright." He stands up and Five follows him out, like some kind of guard dog, Klaus thinks. While he bathes he finds a book from the library and he sits on the edge of Klaus' bed, watching him crawl under the covers with shaking limbs and paranoid eyes. He leaves the lights on, as they always are in Klaus' room, and Klaus turns his back to him, listening to him flip pages quietly. 

If that... thing returns, Five will see it and know he's not crazy. And no one else will come into the room and potentially drug him either. 

He's still not reassured. If it reassures Five, he'll let him ramble about his idea of 'psychosis' or whatever, if only to prove that he's not struggling with some altered state of reality, so he can finally help him. 

Time passes. The hallway creaks.

"How is he?" Diego asks by the doorway. Klaus forces himself not to move, to keep his breathing even. He knows how to do this. Learned how to do it from too many one night stands.

"Asleep, so be quiet," responds Five in a murmur. 

"We need to talk about this, Five," says Luther. Five sighs, hands sliding down the covers of his book before closing it. He stands, sets the book on the bed.

"I know," he mutters. "Alright, come on. Make it quick."

Their footsteps retreat quietly from his bedroom. They thud down the staircase as loudly as Klaus' heartbeat. He's alone, and he's vulnerable. 

He sits up. He can hear muffled voices downstairs. Slowly, ever so silently, Klaus gets out of bed and crosses to his wardrobe. He grabs whatever clothes he sees first - which happens to be a pair of leather pants that he knows well, and a sheer crop top. He throws them both on.

"Klaus, what are you doing?"

He startles at Ben's voice. "Getting changed. Be quiet," he whispers, and he finds a pair of shoes by the end of his bed. Tying the laces, he gets up, silently padding to his door. He'll talk to them, he decides. He'll confront them while Five is there, and maybe he can manifest Ben, too. If he has to, anyway.

He peers out from around his door frame, heart pounding. Someone stands at the top of the stairs by the end of the hall. Someone tall, someone faceless. Despite the lack of eyes, he can feel the weight of its gaze on him. It cocks its head to the side and Klaus launches back into his bedroom, swallowing down a yell. He can hear it coming down the corridor. Hear its feet splintering the wood with each step. Hear its nails rake the wall either side of itself.

He closes the door, and then pushes his chest of drawers behind it, his chest heaving. Something pounds on the door just as he does it and he turns immediately to his window. It's dark outside. Out of instinct, he snatches a coat from the floor, thick and black and fluffy, and he doesn't pay much mind to the dried blood by his window as he claws at it, fumbling for the latch. Eventually, though, he catches it and throws the window up, and as he sticks one leg out the window, he hears his name. Moaned by those voices that always moan his name, day and night, and maybe Reginald told them his name. He doesn't know, but he doesn't have time for them. 

He scrambles onto the fire escape by his window and lands gracefully on the alleyway floor outside the Academy, tumbles, arms stinging. He pulls himself onto his feet, looks up at the fire escape and window above him, and he scrambles out of the alleyway. He'll just have to find Five later. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I absolutely love hearing all your thoughts! You can find me on Tumblr @veteranklaus


	9. I'll nail my hands up to the wall

 

"Where are you going?"

Klaus hums, looking up at Ben. He's slowed down now, stopped running after he weaved through multiple alleyways until he thinks he's safe. The streets are no longer a blur, and he can take in a deep breath, fill his lungs with it fully and breathe for the first time. He shrugs.

"Walking," he says. Ben looks stressed. Can ghosts feel stressed? His hands are hooked in his jacket pockets and his face is pinched, lips pressed together in a tight line. 

"You ought to go back, Klaus. To the Academy," Ben says. Klaus raises an eyebrow.

"I can't. Not yet, anyway," he hums. He glances around, watching cars fly by on the road until there's an opening so he can jog across quickly. 

"It's not safe to be outside right now, Klaus," Ben insists. Klaus glances at him briefly.

"I'm fine, Ben. Outside is fine too. I'm just getting some air and waiting for them to deal with that thing in the Academy, and then I'll go back," he replies. 

"You need to let them help you."

Klaus rolls his eyes. "It's not my fault Five left me," he states. "I would have been fine if he hadn't. Look, thing is, I know where I am, I know what's going on, you all need to stop freaking out on me, I'll go back when it's safe."

"It _is_ safe, Klaus!" Ben says, and he steps right in front of him. Klaus gives him a look. 

"I'm giving it a little more time," he says, and steps right through him. A shudder runs down his spine.

"At least walk me through everything, Klaus, because I don't know what you're thinking right now," Ben asks. Klaus lets out a heavy sigh and leans against a wall, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his coat. 

"Will you shut up if I do?" He asks. Ben just gives him a look and he repeats his heavy sigh. "I got up after Five left," he begins. Ben nods. "I got dressed, so I could go downstairs and confront them. That... thing was there again," he grits his teeth and glances around. Normal people hardly give him a second glance. "So I went back into my bedroom and blocked the door so it couldn't get in. Then I left via the window and here I am. You know I can't fight, so I'll let our superpowered siblings deal with that thing, and then I'll go back. See? All good."

"You trashed your room, Klaus," says Ben, slowly. Klaus raises an eyebrow.

"Nope," he says, shaking his head. "Don't lie to me, Ben. I'm trying to trust you here." His teeth grind again and he pushes off the wall, continuing down the street aimlessly. He isn't sure what time it is. It's dark - it always seems to be dark now, he notices - but the streets are still somewhat busy. Perhaps after dinner, he thinks, or maybe it's a Friday or Saturday night, when everyone goes out. 

"I'm not lying, Klaus, I swear," Ben says. His voice changes from tight and strained to something soft and warm, friendly, and it gives Klaus pause. 

"Better not be," he mutters absently. He swings his head side to side, scanning the street. It's vaguely familiar. "Look, you all just need to calm down. I'm fine."

"For now," says Ben. "I'm not sure how much longer you'll even see me for." He says that bit more so to himself, a mutter beneath his breath, and Klaus chooses not to acknowledge it.

He keeps walking. His arms hold a dull ache in them, throbbing beneath his flesh, and he can feel the stitching on his skin catch against his clothes every so often. It's irritating, and he wonders why he couldn't feel it earlier, but he decides he doesn't want to feel it anymore. 

He does feel, however, like something's missing. Like he's forgotten something, or someone's stolen a part of him. He leans against a wall and tilts his head up, unable to see the stars from the city, and he wonders what it is. He supposes, though, that he's felt that since Dave. His dog tags stay like an anchor around his neck, heavy, like their own little memorial. His hand finds them, clasping them in his palm. 

Dave would understand. Dave would know that he's not rambling, that he's not in some psychotic episode like Five and Grace seem to. Dave would know what to do. He always did. 

He taught him how to use his gun when it became obvious that he didn't know a lick of military training. He taught him how to clean it, used to grumble beneath his breath about the useless things wearing themselves down and how shoddy some were made, and he taught Klaus how to hold it, how to lift it and aim and shoot, and he taught Klaus songs, his favourite ones. 

He wraps his arms around himself as if he's somehow able to recreate the way Dave held him and he walks on, humming beneath his breath. Did his family have a funeral for him? Did they play one of those songs that he loved so much? He can feel his hand in his, see his wide grin, hear his laugh and his deep voice, how he sang. Klaus wants to hear him sing again.

There's music, though. He follows it. There must be another disco again, although when he wanders into the room there's more flashing lights than usual, and the music echoes in his skull as if that's where the band's performing. He blinks wide eyes, watches people dance, and he feels a small smile on his face. He can't find Dave in this crowd, but he must be somewhere, and he'll find his way back to him no doubt. The smell of alcohol and weed is as strong as ever, pleasantly so, like an old safety blanket, and he searches the insides of his pockets with wandering hands. He's sure to have some money on him. Sure enough, he feels crumbled bills thrown aside in his pockets and he hands them over at the bar, exchanging them for a glass of something strong. 

Someone says his name. He spins around to find no one. No Dave, no Johnson, no Daniel. It's a busy night. There must be multiple divisions here, and whoever said his name is quickly no more than a blur, a lost face in this sea of people. So many people, he realises suddenly, and he doesn't recognise any of them. The drink in his hands turns sour and he sets it aside before he can finish half of it, looking around. This isn't a disco. There's too many people and the music is so loud it might as well be helicopter blades and missiles themselves, and he plugs his ears with his fingers and walks backwards. 

He realises, distantly, that this is just another bridge. A bridge between moments, between times and perceptions. A bridge with multiple directions and exits. He can, if he wants to, just cross the bridge and immerse himself in the lights and the music, find his drink and dance, let the music take him elsewhere. Or he could listen to the gunshots echoing down the street, scramble to find cover, to find Dave, to duck behind something and worry about where he so carelessly left his gun. Or he could run from it all.

Someone sets a hand on his shoulder. Brown eyes peer at him, a feminine face marred with glitter and makeup, framed by long brown hair, ever so slightly ruffled with waves. Her painted lips move too quietly beneath the din of the music for him to catch whatever it is she's saying, but she nudges him onto his feet and, with a small hand around his wrist, she pulls him through the sea of faces until cold air hits his face and the music recedes slightly, quieter, unable to seep through the walls of the building it's trapped in.

"Are you okay, man?" She asks, and he can finally hear her. He swallows dryly, eyes flitting to and fro. She takes his wrist and guides him further from the rave. "You looked like you were having a rough time there. Did you take anything?" She peers up at him, trying to study his eyes, and he shakes his head.

"No. No, I don't think so. 'm sober," he murmurs. His skin feels electric, alive with its own energy. The woman smiles at him.

"Good, good. Sometimes it just gets too much in there, huh?" She muses. "My name's Anna."

He eyes the hand she offers. Her forearms are almost entirely covered with bracelets and glowing bands, and there's a smudge of glitter on the back of her hand. He shakes it. "Klaus," he says. He turns to peer at the rave over his shoulder. "I - I don't know what happened, sorry," he admits. She waves his apology away.

"Overwhelmed. Happens all the time, we just got to look out for one another, huh? You okay now?" She asks, and he breathes. Vietnam recedes, and the girl, Anna, stays in clarity. He grasps onto it. His head bobs up and down in a gentle nod. "Good. You ought to think about going home now, Klaus. Get some rest." He opens his mouth to tell her that he can't. He can't go home. But the words forget to leave his mouth, and he forgets what he was going to say anyway. She says something he doesn't catch but when he blinks, she's gone. He swallows, takes a staggering step backwards until he hits a wall, and he rubs his eyes. Glitter comes back on his hands. 

He looks around. "Ben? Ben? I'm sorry, please come back," he calls. He can't see Ben. He sinks down until he can press his forehead against his knees. There's a fleeting thought about sobriety. Had he taken something? He can't tell. Ben doesn't like it when he sleeps on the streets, though, so he forces himself onto his feet and begins to walk. 

A florescent light hums with energy above him. His hand pushes open a glass door and he steps inside, a heavy smell of pastries and coffee in the air. He blinks. Griddy's Donuts, he thinks. There's one person in there, sitting with a coffee and a donut, scrolling on her phone, and he staggers to the counter, dropping into a stool by it. He still has money; he pulls it out of his pockets. A bag of murky coloured crystals comes out with them. He was sure it wasn’t there a moment ago. He spends a while staring at them before remembering he's in public and can't do that, and he stuffs it into his pocket again for later. He feels as if he hasn't eaten in a while. Ben always nags him to eat when he gets money. He's surprised he hasn't spent it all on the drugs.

He asks for a surprise when a woman comes by to take his order. She gives him a pink iced donut with a hot chocolate. He tears a bit off the donut and eyes it. It smells, he thinks, like rot. The hot chocolate scalds his tongue when he tries to drink it, and so he holds it for a minute, blows across it, and when he tries it again it's lukewarm, unpleasantly so. He puts it down and slouches over his order, head in his hands, and peers through his fingers to watch the clock hanging on the wall. It doesn't move when his eyes are open, but when he blinks it tells him ten minutes have passed. It's a liar, he thinks. Everthing's lying to him. 

Footsteps echo like gunshots as the other customer in the diner comes close, setting her dishes on the counter before turning to him. "Aren't you Diego's brother?" She asks him. "Klaus, isn't it?" He stares at her. How does everyone know who he is? Why do they know? But, he thinks, with a small smile, they don't. Because he's fooled them all. His real name is Four, and they don't know that. Everyone is a liar and so is he. It's fitting.

"Are you high?" She asks him. Klaus blinks. He thinks he might be. He probably is. He shrugs. 

"You don't know me," he states. He turns away from her.

"You're bleeding," she says. Klaus follows her gaze. Blood drips down his fingertips, darkening the leather of his pants with little droplets. He hums. Something about stitches echoes somewhere. There's a sigh, and hands on him again - why does everyone feel the need to touch him? - and he's on his feet. "Can we get that in a bag to go, please," the woman asks. When Klaus sinks low, she snakes one of his arms around her shoulders, grabs the rotting donut he bought, and guides him to the door. 

He's in a car. The donut's on his lap. "I'll take you home. There's only so many times I'll watch Diego off his head trying to find you," the woman tells him. Klaus startles.

"No! No, not home. It's not safe." Where is home? Home is somewhere he doesn't know. He doesn't think he has a home. The imposter for home, though, reminds him of danger, of why he was outside in the first place. The woman eyes him. "Please." Maybe she knows it's not safe. She's part of it all. He should have realised when she knew his name. He throws the car door open and tumbles out, hands wet on the floor, palms stinging, and hands on him, again. 

"Klaus - okay, okay. I won't take you home, Hargreeves," the woman tells him, holding his wrists so he can't hit her or shove her away again. Klaus stills slowly, hesitantly, eying the woman carefully. “Promise,” she adds. Klaus flexes his fingers in her grasp and nods.

”Okay,” he relents. She drops her hands and he follows her back to her car, sliding into the passenger’s seat. He lets his head roll to the side, forehead leaning against the cool window as she starts her car up and begins to drive.

”Know why you’re bleeding?” She asks. “Are you hurt?”

Klaus eyes his arm. He keeps it over his lap to try and avoid any droplets of cherry red spilling onto her car seat. It isn’t bleeding heavily, but it is steady, pooling in the middle of his palm and flooding the creases in his skin. It’s almost mesmerising. It glistens as they drive beneath lights, bright like spilled wine, and in the dark it turns black like ink, thick and heavy, a weight in his hand.

”I have stitches,” he utters. “Must’ve pulled one. I didn’t notice.”

The woman spares him a brief glance before turning her attention back to the road. “I’ll have a look at it,” she offers. Klaus hums his acknowledgement and watches the stream on his arm flow with another drop, squeezed free from his flesh. 

Maybe, he thinks, this will help. His bones have felt so heavy, but here he feels lighter, and he can see the blood in pure clarity. Maybe he can bleed out whatever he’s been drugged with. 

The car door opens and a hand guides him out of the car and into a house. A nice, normal house. Not some mansion like the Academy, not like the crackhouses he used to occupy. A family home, perhaps. He’s guided inside and into the kitchen where his jacket is taken from him - he has a brief moment of panic, worrying this woman might find the drugs he somehow ended up with, hidden away in his pocket - and he’s made to stand with his bleeding arm over a sink. 

One of the wound’s had reopened. The woman cleans his skin of blood and he watches with fascination as it stains the water pink, stains his skin before it is scrubbed away, and it twirls gracefully down the drain. He misses it. His skin feels too clean, too pale, too corpse-like without it. 

He sits on a chair and she asks, “do you want anything for pain?” 

“No pills,” he utters, eyes flirting around the room. 

The woman purses her lips, drifting around her kitchen for a moment before opening a cupboard. She turns back to him, brandishing a hardly-touched bottle of whiskey and raising her eyebrows. Klaus eyes it, then shakes his head. “Just do it without,” he tells her, looking down at his arm, outstretched and resting on folded towels on her table.

”If you say so,” she says, placing the bottle back and drifting once more to his side. “I’ll phone Diego after and have him come pick you up, how’s that?” She asks. Klaus watches blood bubble slowly to the surface of his wound, threatening to spill over. He wants it to.

Upon not receiving a response, she sighs and comes closer. When she begins to re-stitch the wound with skill, Klaus looks away. “What’s your name?” He asks. She spares a glance at him.

”Call me Patch,” she answers. Klaus nods.   
  
She’s half way through the wound when a phone goes. Klaus startles and Patch offers a murmured apology, reaching for her phone set aside on the table. She raises a brow at the caller before answering it, balancing the object between her shoulder and her ear as she returns her hands to Klaus.

”Hey, Hargreeves,” she says. Klaus eyes her for a moment, but looks away when she looks at him. She hums in acknowledgement to this one-sided conversation, head bobbing. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got him right here.” He looks at her. She eyes him, then. “No, he’s fine. Opened a cut on his arm that I’m re-stitching for him, but fine. I think he might be high, though I thought he was an energetic high... Ah. Right. Yeah, well, I’ll keep him here. You know the address. Bye.” She hangs the phone up, sets it aside. “Diego’s coming to get you,” she tells him absently. Klaus avoids her prying eyes.   
  
She looks nice. She sounds nice and friendly, and her face looks inviting, like someone he can trust, but there’s that calculating look behind her eyes. She knows how to get people to trust her while getting what she wants from them. He’s not going to be like that.

”Okay,” he simply replies. He eyes his wounds. Knives or nails? He isn't sure. 

"Do you have a problem with that?" She inquires. Klaus hums. 

"Does he have a problem with that?" He returns. She looks at him.

"Should he?"

Klaus shrugs. "You tell me." He grimaces as the stitches tug his skin, but then she's done, patting his wrist and standing up. 

"I shouldn't think so," she replies, not looking at him. "He said you were ill."

Klaus hums. His fingertips dance over the table top, fingernails running lightly along the wood. "Health is just a bunch of opinions. Not all of them matter."

He receives an odd look once more, one he's growing used to. Patch skirts the table and holds out a bag. "You ought to eat," she tells him. He eyes the bag with the donut in it with discontent, his nose wrinkling. Nonetheless, he plucks it from her hand, opening it and peering inside. It's still there, sitting innocently, pink icing glistening in the lighting. He used to be able to eat donuts until they made him sick. Now, he reaches out with hesitant fingers, tearing a small piece off and holding it up to eye it. He parts his lips, places it on his tongue, and chews. The icing bursts into blooming sweetness on his tongue, sliding over his teeth, and he chews until it's little more than dissolving mush. His stomach twists. He wonders if poison can be sweet. He tears off another piece. Lifts it and stares at it, then drops it back into the bag to join the rest. His eyes catch onto the donut. He realises, now, without that first piece he ate, it will never be whole again. Even if he glues that second piece back to the rest of the donut, there'll still always be a piece missing, even if that broken piece is back with the rest. He narrows his eyes at it. He wonders if it's trying to tell him something. Maybe it is. 

"Can I go to the bathroom?" He asks, eyes flicking up to Patch. She watches him for a moment before she nods, and she guides him through her house and into a bathroom. Klaus throws her a smile. "Thank you, Miss," he murmurs, and he closes the door between them, locks it, and leans back against it. He still has the donut with him. He can't let it go. 

He looks around. A man stands in the mirror, pale skin and wide eyes, chest heaving below a sheer crop top, blood staining his clothes. When Klaus narrows his eyes, so does the stranger. But the stranger's lips wobble upwards, twitching, crumbling, unsteady, and Klaus turns away from him quickly. He read, once, that mirrors bring bad things. Maybe he's the bad thing on the wrong side of the mirror. He looks around the bathroom instead.

There. There's a window, short and narrow, but he goes for it, finding the latch and sliding it as far open as it can go. He stands up on the toilet, reaches his arms out of the window first, follows it by his head, and tries to make his shoulders as narrow as possible before he tries to follow it out. The ledge below him digs painfully into his ribs, the window above him scrapes his shoulders. He drops back into the bathroom, takes his coat off, and throws it out the window before trying again. Without the thick fur it's easier to slide through, and one his torso is out it's easy to let himself fall out and let his legs follow. He grabs his jacket, grabs the donut bag, and he runs. 

He wonders how many bathroom windows he's jumped out of. Probably a ridiculous amount, certainly not a normal amount. At least, he thinks, this time he has clothes.

He slows at some point, when the street turns from houses to apartments to run down, sketchy alleys, and he pulls his coat back on, shivering but not from the cold, and he rubs his hands together. He wonders what time it is. He wonders what day it is. Is he even sure of the year? He doesn't care. He just needs some space. Space from everything. Space from what?  His mind races a mile a minute, like an out of control freight train that he's not even on. He just sits beside the tracks and watches it go by, buffeted by the wind it creates, nothing more distinguishable than a mess, a quick blur, here one moment and gone the next. Occasionally, very occasionally, he finds himself in one of the carriages, watching the world go by in a blur, but he stays in whatever carriage it is. Sometimes he finds himself sliding into a different carriage, taking a different seat, in a different place, a different time, reality changing to match the carriage. Sometimes he finds himself on the back of the train, in that tiny spot outside, clutching the railings to stay on, lost, alone, outside, in the middle of a hurricane. 

He runs his hands through his hair, stretching right up, ribs pushing against the fabric of his shirt. He paces. On another road, a cop car's sirens blare, bathing the place in flashing blue and red. 

Is he alone? He bites his thumbnail. Maybe he ought to get away. Go further into the city. Or leave it altogether, perhaps. Visit another city, a village, a different state. Maybe he could go to Germany. It can't be hard to get out of the country, he thinks. It's simple. Thousands of people do it every day. And they'll have to understand his situation, too, and they'll let him go. Maybe he could get a bus, or a train. He's never been on a plane. The idea both frightens and excites him. A giant metal tube flying in the sky? Trapped in there for hours, surrounded by hundreds of other people, watching the world disappear below him, watching a sun rise over the horizon of the Earth and bathe it in a Heavenly glow. Perhaps he could hitchhike. Does he have money? He digs his hands into his pockets again. 

His fingers brush plastic. Familiar, safe plastic, inviting beneath the pads of his fingers. A promise of bliss. He pulls the little bag out, lifting it up to the flickering streetlight to bathe the dirty crystals and dust inside in pale, sickly light. It takes everything away, he knows. Whisks reality away from his fingertip in a way that he likes. He wonders how much is in the bag. Seemingly not a lot, but he knows better than that. He glances around and ducks into a side alley, right up to the back. He sits down, eyes the bag, and then he places it in the palm of one hand, takes off his shoe, and uses that to crush the crystals up into a sickening powder. Dust escapes the bag but is caught in the creases of his skin, stark against the inky tattoo scrawled across his palm.

He puts his shoe back on, opens the bag, and tips the contents all onto the palm of his hand. Someone says his name. His head whips to follow the sound chased away by the wind, like hounds on its heel, only to find no one. He wonders how he got this. 

He wets a finger with his tongue and, like a lollipop in sugar, he dips it into the powder until it's thickly coated, and he repeats a motion of rocking as he sits, finger scrubbing powder into his gums. He does it again, again, pausing every so often to let it dissolve. Eventually, though, it takes too long, and so he brings his palm to his nose and he snorts the rest. Swipes his finger over his palm, just in case, and sucks it clean. Bitterness attacks his mouth like an invasion and his nose runs, his eyes blink rapidly. He eyes the empty bag and lets it rest on the dirty floor. He knows he won't have been the first person to have done this here, so it doesn't matter. He rubs his hand over the floor as if it makes up for his littering. 

Past experience tells him to wait. So he sits there, patiently, waiting for it to take him away before that thing can round the corner and block his exits, before the freight train of his mind can start again. His cheeks feel wet. He realises he's crying, sobbing, and he can't breathe. He presses his fists against his eyes and grinds his teeth as hard as he can before they're blown apart by a sob, a spluttering gasp. He thinks he broke something; something inside of him. A part of him is furious at himself, ruining his good streak like he just did. But he's never had a good streak, he knows. 

It's fine. He's fine. The sobs become less and less his, someone else's, and the world wobbles around him like jelly, and the floor feels so cool, so blessedly nice when he lays against it, and he can force a smile mentally despite the way his physical body heaves for air, wheezing between bouts of gut-wrenching panic, pupils wide, lungs burning hot for a break in this panic attack. He thinks he might have rolled onto his back, one arm outstretched in front of him. The sky above him seems so far and then suddenly so close, like he's laying beneath a trampoline as someone jumps, forcing the void of space inches from his face enough to make him flinch and choke, hit his head off the floor, and then laugh. He might still be crying, though he can't feel anything except the cool floor beneath him, and how good it feels to sprawl his limbs out across it like a bag of ragdoll bones all tied together, useless, limp. He must look like a corpse, tossed aside without a second thought in some alleyway, stained with blood and the feeling of other's hands, so many hands, trying to tug him to different places, different times.

This time, he thinks, baring his teeth against bile, he'll do it his own self. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It just gets worse before it gets better. I have a vague idea of the ending in mind, though I fear prolonging his psychosis might seem repetitive or boring to you guys, the readers. Without spoiling anything; it gets better and then horribly worse once more. Though I'd love to hear your thoughts on the whole plot and if there's an idea you might like to see addressed!
> 
> Additionally; would a chapter from a sibling’s POV, or part of a chapter, be interesting? How would you feel about that?
> 
> Thank you!


	10. the pastor says I'm fine

"We're so fucking stupid," Diego hisses, hands running through his hair as he takes in the mess that is Klaus' bedroom. Clothes are thrown around the room, one drawer pulled out completely, rocking on its hinges. The chest of drawers is half way across the room thanks to Luther busting down the door. His window is wide open.

"It was ten minutes," Allison says, scrubbing her hands down her face. 

"I should have known he was awake," Five says. He stares at the empty bed with a closed expression, jaw clenched. "He can't be too far. Split up and look for him. He'll only get himself hurt." And, with that, Five disappears in a flash of blue. Diego goes to the window first, peering out of it. Of course the alleyway is empty, Klaus long gone. He closes his eyes.

The past few days have been nothing short of a roller coaster. Klaus' running away and incoherency has them all on edge, especially before they understood what was going on, although he isn't sure a diagnosis, or possible diagnosis, made anything better. His brother can't tell what's real and what isn't. He thinks they're out to hurt him. He's scared of them. Only when he knows who they are, that is. He feels horrible. He feels as if he's let his brother down. He should have known when he picked him up when he ran away at breakfast. He should have noticed something was wrong. He should have listened when he rambled. No, he thinks. He should have known that time he woke him up with his screaming.

"I'll follow the alleys," he says, glancing back at everyone else. "Check places he might have gone. Alleys, bars, clubs, parks. He can't be far." He slides out of the window, following Klaus' footsteps down the fire escape before anyone else can speak. He can see skid marks on the ground. He fell off the fire escape. Scrambled to his feet and then sprinted onto the streets. He wonders what he's thinking. He can't fathom it. 

Five had explained their presumption, of course. Expanded on what Grace had said. Diego thinks the thing that scares him the most is how quickly everything unravelled. One minute Klaus was fine, then twitchy, a little on edge, and then he couldn't tell who they were. The image of Klaus, blood trickling down his arms, curled beneath his window and sobbing, flashes in his mind. Klaus curling his fingers around Diego's and smiling shakily, a whispered  _Dave?_ leaving his lips. Christ, he should have known. But it all happened so quickly. He left for breakfast and it was like Five running away all over again, coming back different. No doubt it feels like the end of the world to himself, too.

He wonders if Ben could have even gotten through to him. He had seemed as confused as the lot of them when he was manifested to insist Klaus wasn't high, but again, that was before the downfall. Before the avalanche, more likely, everything crumbling and crashing so violently, so suddenly. 

Ben feels just the same. Although he had been there to watch it, had seen him run through the streets faster than he had ever seen him run before, with more terror in his eyes than there had been when he had gotten kidnapped and tortured by Hazel and Cha-Cha. Watched him run himself into heat stroke and pass out in some dirty alleyway and then wake up with no recollection of it all, as if he hadn't been running basically non-stop for hours. 

He had no idea how to approach him. Mentioning their family or the Academy was a no-go, evidently. Disagreeing even in the slightest had him pinned with a suspicious and distrusting look. It was painful. Painful to have Klaus look at him as if he had no idea who he was, to scream when Luther grabbed him, to go utterly limp and unaware of time passing for hours at a time. What was worse? The constant terror and confusion, the innocent, misplaced drunk happiness, or the blank eyed, vacant stare?

He had recognised the woman in Griddy's and been virtually ecstatic to see her there, helping him. His heart had stopped when Klaus had jumped out her car, but he seemed to calm again, enough so to let her clean him up and get him to eat, even if just a little. But he knew, when Klaus asked for the bathroom what he had planned. 

"Klaus, please," he had begged, of course to no avail. Klaus seemed to not be able to hear or see him like this, unless he was just determined to completely ignore him. He isn't sure which one it is, really. Patch might come to check on him, but it would be too late, and Ben, as he always has done, followed Klaus, running down the street once more. Diego would get to Patch's soon, though, and they'd realise he had run off again and they'd go find them. The others are already out anyway, so there's a chance Klaus might end up running into them on the street as well. It’s wishful thinking, he knows. Klaus knows how to run. He knows the city, knows how to shake people off his tail, even, seemingly, in this state. 

That, of course, would only be the case if the universe worked in their favour. Hours passed. Klaus, at least, had a brief moment in which he seemed to be able to see Ben, if only to reinforce his paranoia. And then relapse. He almost wishes Klaus doesn’t have a moment of clarity soon so he doesn’t have to realise everything that’s happened. He knows he’ll hate himself.

He sits on the floor by Klaus, knees pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. Klaus is on his back, one leg pulled up, the other outstretched, his hips at an awkward angle. He's calmed down from his panic attack at least, though each breath comes with a wheeze or a grunt as if it takes him effort to do it. His cheeks are wet. He's smiling. Eyes swallowed by a blind pupil, staring up at the sky. He flinches occasionally, or lets out a moan, mutters something that's complete gibberish. He rubs his face on the floor like a cat nuzzling a hand, clenches his jaw hard, teeth grinding absentmindedly. 

He should have said something when he noticed he was acting odd. Tried to get him to open up, tried to get him to talk, tried to talk to the others. He should have done something, but by the time things had gotten serious enough to truly notice there was a problem, it was too serious to get under control easily. And, quite frankly, it was terrifying to watch. To see Klaus' eyes unfocused, to settle on his siblings and either fill with suspicion and fear or hold no recognition whatsoever. To listen to him ramble about things, nonsensical things, things that don't match up, and to see him obsess over it, react so violently when told it doesn't make sense. To watch him throw himself at his bedroom window and not seem to even realise he was doing it, to scratch his skin raw and bloody; it was easily worse than watching him do stupid, dangerous things to get drugs. He was just overly grateful for the fact that he hadn't gotten himself into trouble - stealing or breaking into places or starting fights. He had somehow managed to avoid that, which was a small blessing.

He watches Klaus laze on the ground and he wonders if he's been whisked away by his own mind or if it's the drugs that have stolen his reality. Klaus moans, panting, cheeks flushed, and he struggles to pull the arm that hasn't found itself trapped beneath him out of his jacket, free to the biting chill in the air before he slumps again. Although the situation is near-identical to many in the past, Ben hates it. He feels as if it's a thousand times worse.

An hour passes. Klaus hardly moves if not to twitch. His eyes follow things unseen by Ben. He can't decide whether or not it's the drugs or his mind. He reaches out and his hand wavers like an illusion, like a hologram, when he fails to touch his hand. Klaus' fingers twitch. He tries again. He fails again. He can't remember how many times he's sat like this, only usually Klaus doesn't cry when he is high. 

 

 

"What do you mean? How did - he's six foot and was probably decked out in a leather skirt and covered in glitter, how do you lose him?" Diego hisses, hands running through his hair. He's just pulling up to Eudora's house when she phoned him back, telling him that she lost Klaus.

"It was two minutes, Diego. I can't even fit through my bathroom window," she replies defensively. Diego sighs through gritted teeth, hits his steering wheel, and brakes roughly in front of her house. He had phoned her asking her to keep an eye open when he couldn't find him immediately, only for her to say she already found him. She had him at hers, she had said, cleaning up a wound he reopened and having him eat a donut.  _He's - he's... ill. Just keep an eye on him,_ he had said, and she must have thought physically. He hangs up as he opens her door, hurrying inside without a knock or an announcement of his presence. 

"Would it kill you to knock for once?" Eudora quips, arms folded over her chest, greeting him from the living room doorway.

"What happened?" He asks, looking around. "Did he take anything?" Her house doesn't seem to be in a state of disarray. Nothing look stolen. There's no missing ornaments, though he can't tell if the jewellery box she keeps beneath her bed is still there. 

"No. He went to the bathroom and climbed out the window," she says, gesturing to the bathroom door, open, revealing a small window still open. Diego thinks that only Five or Vanya could ever shimmy out of that, let alone Klaus, though his brother has always been narrow and slender. Maybe too much. "I left him for a minute before knocking the door. He was gone, and then I phoned you."

Five minutes. "Shit," he hisses, and he bolts for her door again, feet slamming against the floorboards of her porch. He runs to the back of her house, eying where the window drops - skid marks, there, on the floor - and swings his head side to side. He can't have gotten that far in five minutes. 

They'd only left him for fifteen. It had taken them hours before Diego had called Eudora. The detective is quick to come to his side, and she looks as if she might reach out to put her hand on his arm before deciding not to, looking around instead. "How ill is he?" She asks, eyes narrowed. Diego looks away. 

"I... it's bad," he admits in a mumble, head nodding. "I didn't mean physically. He... he doesn't know what's going on. He didn't know who I was once." His voice wavers for a brief moment before he catches it before it can plummet into something embarrassing. "He's not dangerous - he's confused. Scared. He might get himself into shit, you know. I - I need to find him, Eudora. It's bad." She catches his gaze, then, and when his wavers, hers hardens into a determined promise. She nods.

"Of course," she says. "Get going - the others are still out, aren't they?" He nods. "Good. I'll go out and look as well. You phone me if you find him, and so will I if I do. He won't be far," she tells him. "He might have gone somewhere he knows." Diego wants to tell her that she doesn't understand. He's fairly certain that Klaus doesn't know what year it is, how old he is, let alone what street he remembers frequenting at one point in his life. But he keeps his mouth shut, nodding gratefully, and he gives the surrounding area a quick look before taking off again.

They all bought phones. It was a collective decision upon them all moving back into the untouched, still-standing Academy, deciding that they needed it to keep in contact. Klaus' had still been in his room, discarded carelessly on the floor. Diego checks his now, swiftly. They have a group chat - courtesy of Klaus - and in it all he sees is  _not found him yet. Not got him. Not seen him. Diego?_

 _A friend found him, but he ran away five minutes ago. Check around here._ He sends his location when the option pops up and leaves them to it, and then he gets busy. He jogs down the street and he tries to think like Klaus. He probably would have stuck to the back alleys, getting away from this homely location and further into the city. And so Diego does that too, and he looks into each alleyway, using his phone to shine light into it, checking behind and beside dumpsters and calling his name. A few people on the street look at him oddly. 

He thinks he sees him once. He strains his ears at a faint sound and he hears footsteps, running through an alley, and breath be damned he sprints after it. His poor phone light shows him stained leather pants and a fur jacket, messy hair, wide green eyes. Although Klaus looks at him, he doesn't  _look at him._ His eyes lay upon him and see a faceless person, perhaps, or maybe a ghost, or a stranger, and he runs faster. For the fact that Klaus seems to have lost whatever lucidity he had with Eudora, he's agile and fast and nimble, and he jumps a metal fence with practised ease, skirts around a corner, jumps another wall, more corners, tight spaces, and he's gone. Diego stands in his wake and can't hear him, can't see him anymore. 

His fist connects to a building. He hardly acknowledges the pain it brings. " _Fuck_ ," he spits the word like venom from his mouth, panting for air. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." He kicks the building. 

He's gone again.

 

 

More time passes. Eventually, Luther calls the group chat and they all crowd together in a nearby fast food place, open 24/7, with the addition of Eudora.

"How can we just lose him like that?" Diego growls, his fists curled tightly on the table, eyes more focused on the flickering streetlamp on the street outside. "I literally fucking saw him. He was at your house! There was five minutes between him leaving and us going out to look for him!"

"He knows how to run," says Luther, his hands clasped tightly together. "Don't blame yourself."

"He might know how to run but he doesn't know his own name," Diego hisses. His hands scrub down his face, tongue dashing across his teeth. He doesn't mean it in a bad way, but his mind races with bad scenarios. Klaus could get jumped, could go down the wrong alley at the wrong time, could end up in some shady club, could end up with a stranger with bad intentions and a nice smile, could misinterpret something and react in a way to escalate the situation and get himself hurt, could piss off the wrong person, talk to the wrong person, meet an old friend of his all too eager to pull him back into drugs. He could end up at the other end of the city, could get the attention of some ignorant prick that thinks he's a trash-talking crackhead. He might pick at his stitches or fall and rip them open, could be bleeding out in an alleyway or breaking into a place for reasons known only to himself. 

No one seems to have anything to say to that. What are they supposed to say? It's late - or, arguably, early at this point - and they're exhausted, running around alleyways and yelling, hurrying to and fro to try and catch him. 

"How ill is he?" Eudora asks him, and he can tell when she slips into her career mode, her chin tipped up and hands clasped together. "It might help the urgency of putting out a report for him. We can have some people looking for him as well. Spread them out further, get his face on the news."

Diego glances at his phone. "It's two in the morning," he says. "The news is hours away. He could be... gone by then."

"There's not much more we can do," Eudora tells him softly. "You're all obviously exhausted. Other than running around the hundreds or thousands of alleys in the city, there's not much more you can do. I'm sorry." 

Diego grits his teeth and looks away. Five leans forwards, catching Eudora's attention. "He's in a psychotic episode. He doesn't know what is real or not. I'd suggest not mentioning us or bringing him home unless he's lucid - it just triggers his flight reaction," he tells her. She nods her head, cataloguing that information away. 

"I'll see what I can do in the precinct," she says, and she stands up. So does Diego.

"I'm going to keep looking," he states, looking over them all. They all exchange looks, words offered silently. Luther gets up.

"I'll look for a little longer as well," he says, then turns to the others. "You guys ought to get some rest. We can try again in the morning."

Reluctance hangs like a thick fog among them all, but nonetheless the fact remains that the only option they have is to keep looking or to wait, hopefully, for some police assistance. Perhaps they can have a search party going soon, if Klaus isn't found. Diego wants to think he's overreacting. He wants to think that he's being stupid, thinking of Klaus as a missing person. He wants to think he'll come striding into the Academy with a new jacket and a pair of heels, cracking jokes and slyly eying the bar. He knows, though, that won't happen. Not now.

He and Luther leave, stepping back into the chill of the street. "Any ideas?" Luther asks him. Diego sighs, toying with his bottom lip between his teeth. "Fuck if I know," he mutters. "I'm not sure if he's passed out in some alleyway or if he's in a club or in some crack house." He rubs his hands together and looks around. The streets are empty, lights all off in windows. He bites the inside of his cheek to wake himself up. "Head further in the city, I guess. Check out anywhere that looks like a place he might previously go to. Check any raves. Check inside dumpsters."

"Inside?"

Diego glances at him. "It's cold. He's probably slept worse places and been aware of it."

Luther looks uncomfortable at that, and Diego isn't sure if it's of the idea of sleeping in a dumpster or of Klaus having done it before. "I'll go back to the Academy at three," he says. Diego stares at him. "We can't do this all night, Diego. Our best chance is to get his face out there in the day, get more people looking for him. It's the best chance." His head shakes slowly, sadly, and Diego has to bite back rising comments. He knows that. He doesn't think he can just sit down in his bed at the Academy with the knowledge that Klaus is in all kinds of trouble. 

"Alright. Fine," he says, waving at him. "Keep an eye out," he says, and then he's parting ways, walking down the street with quick, long strides. He looks out for leather pants and pale skin peering out of a thick fur jacket. He looks for wild green eyes and tattooed hands, listens for his high laugh or his chesty sobs or his muffled screams. He doesn't know which sound he's more likely to hear. 

He wonders, briefly, about Ben. He hopes that he's there with him. He hopes, at the very least, that he's not actually alone, even if Ben can't do anything. 

 

 

Luther greets him in the Academy. He raises an eyebrow.

Diego shakes his head. "Nothing."

 

 

There's music again. He doesn't hear it as much as he does feel it, in the wake of his high. Music playing in his bones, in his skull, light hearted and free. There's no tune, no sound, but he can feel the feeling that music brings. He feels happy and free, weightless, enough so that he can sit up, smiling, swaying to a silent tune, with a sudden bought of energy. He feels good. Everything's still ever so slightly distorted, his mind disconnected like some hot air balloon, flying free in the sky, but it isn't intense enough that he can feel the way his flesh melted into the ground as if it was his grave, his ever so comfortable grave. For some reason the floor always feels so amazing when he's high on mandy, he remembers that. He scrubs his hands at his face, some half-hearted thought about dirt on his face, and he leans back against the wall and lets his eyes slip closed. 

"Klaus? Are you okay?" 

Klaus hums. Ben's always so caring, he thinks. Though sometimes it's not necessarily nice - more out of an obligation to make sure Klaus isn't actually overdosing. "I'm fine," he whispers, and he's more than fine. He's so warm, and the only thing that could possibly make him feel better is the hands. Hands on his skin, warm, a hug, something to grab, curl his fingers into, a weight on his shoulders and back and chest. Yes, that would be Heaven, he decides. But the hands have decided to leave him alone when he most wants them. It's bitterly ironic. 

He realises his coat is half off, only hanging onto one shoulder, and he has to force himself out of this self-hug he's put himself into, very reluctantly, to pull his arm back into the sleeve. He hopes the fur isn't dirty. It's one of his more expensive coats, he thinks. Or maybe not. He can't remember if he stole it from a thrift shop or a high end shop.

"You can hear me? Open your eyes, Klaus."

"Yeah," he breathes. He opens his eyes.

"Open your eyes, Klaus."

"Mhmm."

"They're closed."

"No." Klaus shakes his head, drawing the word out. He laughs. "'m sorry."

"It's fine, it's fine. I just need to know if you're okay, huh?" Ben insists. Klaus nods.

"'s wearin' off. A bit. Just... let me enjoy it. Little longer," he requests. His hands clasp together and his cheek rests on it, and he pulls his knees right up to his chest, head on his knees, curled up as tightly as he can be. He loves the high from mandy, but it's always so much better with other people. Physical contact is nothing short of Heaven, and the closest he can get is trying to curl up tight enough that his knees dig into his ribs. 

Ben, surprisingly enough, does let him. He doesn't pester him to get up or to find someone, but lets him lose time again to the warm fuzz of his high. He waits for Klaus to 'wake up', as it is, from the blissful ignorance and unawareness the high brings, and to peel his head off his knees and blink blearily. He smiles sadly at him.

"Back with me?" He asks. Klaus nods. 

"I'm here," he says, waving a hand at him, waggling his fingers at him. 

"Good," he says, his voice tentative, whisper-soft. "Good. How are you feeling?"

He drops his hand. His fingertips brush the floor. "I'm good, I'm good. How, uh, how long?" 

"It's been a few hours since you got high," he states.

"And since we spoke?"

Ben glances away in thought. "About forty minutes," he shrugs. Klaus hums. He lifts a hand up and presses it against the wall, using it to haul himself to his feet. He sways for a moment, catches himself with a chuckle, and straightens up. His back cracks as he stretches, along with his elbows and knees. 

"Where are you going?" Ben asks. Klaus shrugs.

"For a walk. Floor's not comfy anymore," he states. "Gotta keep walking."

"Why?" Ben asks curiously. Klaus is glad to see that he's not being so odd anymore but rather working with him. It makes him relax a little.

"Gotta," Klaus reiterates obviously. "Where am I?" He asks, then waves a hand. "Doesn't matter. Just got to keep going." He lifts his head up a little, eyes flitting around. The streets are largely abandoned, all empty and deserted, and he tries to peer at street signs. He's deeper in the city, he thinks. Heading through the middle and to the opposite side from where he began, possibly. He can't quite remember why he has to go, but the fact is strong in his head, present as ever, and so he keeps walking, arms wrapped around himself. 

"Maybe you should find somewhere safe to stay for the night," Ben says at one point. Klaus hums, glancing up with a raised eyebrow. "You know, let the high wear off, gather your bearings... rest. Safely."

Klaus purses his lips. He dips his hands into his pockets and finds them empty. He frowns. "I don't have any money," he says, eyebrows furrowing. "Ah, _shit_. How do I get money?" He leans against a lamp post, looking around in thought. He once worked as a waiter when he first left the Academy. He got fired for showing up to work high, though, and then he never had another job again.

Usually, he would pawn stuff from the Academy. All of Reginald's expensive trophies and ornaments, he'd grab what he could and shove it off on the closest pawn shop. He could... he could...

The idea of going to the Academy sends icy claws tightening around his lungs. He gasps for sudden air, coughing, and it takes him several moments and Ben's soft words to calm down. His heart pounds beneath his chest inexplicably, his hands tremble. His mind, still fuzzy and disconnected, still rolling, panics from the panic, and it's hard to keep himself calm. He misses the warm fuzz of his high, misses the way he could blink and be a mile further down the street. 

"What is it?" Ben asks. "What's wrong, Klaus?"

He shakes his head. "'s nothing, nothing. Just..." He trails off, breathing deeply. He needs to go. He needs to go, he needs to go _now_. Why is it always so dark? He doesn't think he's seen the sun in a long time. He hates the dark. It makes the shadows dance tauntingly around him, makes eyes peer out of alleyways, prying, invasive, mocking.He rubs his eyes, paces around the street. Plan of action. He needs to go, but unless he plans to walk, he needs money. Money's his first priority, then. He forces a smile. "Just need to get money, then," he says. He eyes the places he passes by. It'd be easier if any shops were open - he knows how to steal a whole rack of jewellery in broad daylight. What he can't get away with, though, is smashing a window. 

"Pogo gives you allowance," says Ben, hesitant. Klaus stills. So it's not really about getting him a room to sleep in tonight, but back at the Academy. He grits his teeth. 

"Don't, Ben. Don't," he hisses between his teeth. He rubs his hand along his jaw - it aches slightly from grinding his teeth so hard during his high - and he keeps going down the street. He ducks down a couple of alleys. He needs money. How is he supposed to get money? 

He sees neon lights and he pauses. Two women stagger out of the club, drunk and wrapped around one another with mischievous grins and teasing hands while one phones for a taxi. Klaus looks at the club and tries to ignore Ben's face, so sad and pained, and he waits nearby. He can hear the music bleed out of the club, can hear people stagger out occasionally, and he lingers just further down the street. Paces around a corner, thumbnail between his teeth. He feels like he's running out of time. He feels like it's been dark forever. The flickering streetlamps are nothing to natural light that he craves. 

"Klaus, please calm down," Ben asks of him. Klaus ignores him. How is he supposed to calm down? He's hit with sudden fear for no reason that he can even think of, and then he's hit with the fear that he realises his thoughts are scattered. That he blinks and he's half way down the street without noticing. That he's moving and talking on his own and Ben's gone and someone's staring at him from a window, and another curtain pulls back to have someone else stare at him. The wind whispers things to him. Wasn't there something he had to do? Everything was fine a moment ago. He thinks so, anyway. His hands scrub down his face and he fears he might scrub his skin off with it. It's dark. Bad things happen in the dark. The mausoleum is dark.

He hits a wall. Reginald closes and locks the doors. It's dark. Klaus doesn't like the dark. It's always dark. 

"Ben?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote the end of this chapter a lot and I'm preeeetty unsatisfied with it lol. Originally, Klaus went into the club, but I decided I didn't want him to eventually so perhaps talking about it seems unnecessary but hey, it exists now


	11. in the blacklight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a shorter chapter than the latest few; it's a bit of a filler until the next one. Nonetheless, I really like the imagery I've got in this chapter lol  
> Enjoy!

"'m not scared. I'm not scared. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not." 

He hadn't been, for a while. Not until he realised what it was he was seeing. There had been nannies, first, and he had thought they made funny, if not slightly odd, sounds. People stared at him and his siblings never seemed to notice them. Then there was blood and gore and they were begging, crying, moaning, and they were mangled, and they began to scream at all hours of the day and all hours of the night. Then he began to be scared of them. Of course, he tried not to be. He tried to stare at them, tried to talk to them, tried to listen. He wanted, once, to make Reginald proud. Wanted Reginald to look at him as he did Luther or Five or Allison. A part of him still wants that, sometimes, although he gave up when he realised that torturing himself would gain him no love, no approval. Just less thinly veiled disgust. 

"I tried. I tried, I did. They wouldn't... wouldn't stop screaming." 

When you are dead, your vocal chords never run dry. They could scream for years on end. They did. He wonders if anything he had ever done impressed Reginald in the slightest. 

"I'm sorry, I'm..." He trails off with a hiccup, and the heels of his hands come back up to scrub at his wet cheeks. He feels filthy. He feels young. He feels stretched thin. He feels exhausted. How has he enough air to choke on? Enough tears left to sob with? He feels as if he has been wrung dry of everything, and yet emotion pours out of him like some bathtub with the tap left on, flooding the bathroom floor in the dark of night, slipping beneath the thin crack of door and floor and seeping into the wooden slabs of the corridor. He feels like the human embodiment of a horror story, of flickering lights and long corridors, suspicious whispers in the wind and rattling metal, glossy eyes, blue veins, cracked lips. The corpses strung up like decorations, cold bones and splintered mind that splits off in unknown directions like a maze. His bones are empty like an abandoned house, deserted, void. 

He feels as if he's been chased out of his own body. Something else has taken it as home, has cast him out and locked him up. Or perhaps he's been shoved into the depths of his marrow, shackled into the basement of his consciousness for so long his bones and his body doesn't recognise itself as his. Does he recognise them as theirs? He isn't sure anymore. 

He blinks blearily, lifting his-not-his head so he can stare at Ben with his stranger's eyes. He brings a hand up to stuff it between his lips and muffle the chorus of shaking sobs that echo out of his chest. Ben's eyes look watery, too, bloodshot. He crouches in front of Klaus and he says, "you tried. You did. You did." 

His lips quiver as he tries to regain at least some composure, whimpering on a pavement at some ungodly hour in the morning or the night, of which he isn't entirely sure. He wonders, for a brief moment, how old he is. Fear and a desperation that he hasn't felt for a long time bubbles in his throat, a desperation for family and approval. Maybe he's seventeen, fresh out of the Academy, dipping his toe into the bad side of the streets nightlife, spending one of his first nights on the streets again. Or maybe he's nineteen, walking after his first overdose and milking drugs out of men with flirtatious smiles and heavy eyeliner. Maybe he's fifteen, and he's ran from the Academy for a night again to smoke weed and try and sneak into some shady rave to let loud music wash away the torment of the evening. 

He bites back a sob. He doesn't know anything anymore. Someone's taken a match and lit a fire in his skull, set his mind utterly ablaze. If his mind is a library then his memories and all the aspects that make him his own being are the books inside and they have all caught alight, melting, disintegrating into flickering embers and ash, living as fleeting echoes that whizz by like irritating flies. He feels like he's one gust of wind away from being lit on fire whole too. He can feel the fire crawling up his ankles, licking at his clothes, and he's stuck with this realisation slipping between his fingers like sand. He knows something's wrong, and he knows it's getting worse. But soon that realisation will go away, and he'll fall back into the flames for a while before he manages to crawl out. Is he in danger from what his instincts tell him, everyone on the street and the thing in the shadows and his own family, or is he in danger from himself? He thinks the most dangerous thing is that he can't tell.

He longs for something steady and secure, something safe. Longs for it to envelope and devour him like the fire in his mind, but he has little time to dwell on it. His thoughts are fast and fleeting, there for a second and forgotten, discarded as soon as they're gone, shoved apart with thoughts that aren't his, someone else interrupting him to point out that he's cold, or that someone's staring at him, or that something is coming, something is on his heels, so close, so close and why isn't he running? He's asking for torture and pain if he doesn't hurry up and run, and he knows this. The fact slips into his mind as if someone's whispered it in, slipped it in while he wasn't looking.

He isn't sure what he fears more. Death or prolonged pain. A faceless creature mauling him to death or masked people keeping him in a basement to take their emotions out on for weeks, months, until he's begging for death. He's yet to see those masked people other than in his peripheral in crowded streets, but he can already feel their hands on him, feel ties on his wrists and phantom pains from where their fists shall come to meet him. He can feel, too, the pressure of that savage, taunting creature pinning him to some dirty alleyway floor, can feel claws dig trenches in between his ribs, his blood flooding out like tidal waves, can imagine his corpse looking like he's been put through a paper shredder. 

"I don't know what's happening, Ben," he croaks, sniffling and peering out at him. He looks around at the street, unfamiliar, cold, dark, lonely. He doesn't think he's ever been here. 

"I know, Klaus. A lot has happened," Ben says softly, watching as he shakily pulls himself onto his feet and looks around. His anxiety's irrationally high, making his eyes flit around and forcing him to turn his head to peer over his shoulder as if expecting someone to be there. His heart beats like a skipping rope beneath his ribcage. His hands shake. His body aches like a wilting flower, his limbs all heavy and drooping, tears falling astray from his eyes like dying flower petals. He begins to walk down the street again. The club he passes has its lights off and something in him thinks they were on a moment ago. 

"I don't like the dark," he murmurs absently, eying the alleyways he passes. 

"I know, Klaus," Ben utters softly. "I think all the shelters will be closed, though. You're quite far from the Academy, too. You don't have money for a motel."

Klaus runs his hands down his cheeks. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ," he moans, eyes slipping closed. His head shakes gently. He doesn't feel like kicking it on the streets for any longer, so he has no idea what to do. He keeps walking. Maybe he can find somewhere peaceful - a park, maybe, somewhere he can sit and relax until the sun rises. He tries to keep a calm pace, tries not to let his nauseating anxiety over power him and make him run. His eyes still leak and he constantly has to swipe furiously at them, flicking away tears that he can't stop. 

"Are you okay?" Ben asks him. Klaus swallows heavily.

"I feel sick," he mumbles, scratching at his jaw. Bile keeps teasing his throat and he stops occasionally to brace himself against a wall and ride out a larger wave of nausea, blinking it all down.

"You're probably coming down from your high, too. Maybe there's a bathroom around that you freshen up in," Ben offers. Klaus pauses in his steps, eyes wide and flicking over to him.

"My what?" He asks, quiet. Ben's face falls. 

"You got high, Klaus. Ecstasy."

Klaus' tongue dashes across his gums, though the sharp bitterness that comes with rubbing it into his gums has faded with time. He looks down, his shoulders slumping. He doesn't remember it. "Oh," he breathes, and he feels hot tears flood his eyes again, hopelessness weighing his limbs down. He stumbles backwards until his back hits a wall and he can slide down it, hands clasped in front of his mouth. "Oh." 

"I'm sorry," Ben murmurs. He drops his head, shoulders trembling like leaves caught in the wind. 

"Fuck," he hisses, shaking his head. "Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_!" He slams his fist against the wall, teeth gritting together. His jaw does ache in that familiar way that tells him he's been grinding his teeth, as he often does when he's high like that. He runs his hands roughly through his hair, tugging at strands, curling them around his fingers. His mind is melting and his life is crumbling, teetering on a cliff and just taunting him, threatening to crash in one huge, ugly mess, and bring him down with it. And what's he supposed to do? 

He folds his arms on the top of his knees, laying his head on top of it. "I want everything to stop," he mutters. He wants his heart to stop racing and his mind to clear, wave away the growing smoke in his skull. His head aches as if there truly is a fire licking at the walls of his skull and he dances his fingertips over the side of his face, as if he might be able to feel the heat emanating from it, as if he might smell the smoke drifting out of his ears and his nose. 

"I don't know how to help you, Klaus," Ben admits sadly. He's sitting beside him on the floor, looking around the street. "I can't do anything."

It's not that he's given up on trying to urge him back to the Academy or back to their siblings, but rather that he fears that bringing it up will send him tumbling over the edge again. At least now he's sitting, talking, at least aware enough of his immediate surroundings and actions. Ben isn't willing to set him off again. 

"How about we find a bathroom, Klaus? You can be inside for a while, at least."

Slowly, Klaus nods. He sniffles and hauls himself onto his feet, and together they search for a public bathroom that hasn't been locked. It takes a while before they actually find one, and Klaus is quick to slide inside. It's shoddy, run down and covered in graffiti, the lights buzzing overhead, but it's shelter and there's no one else inside. Klaus plants his hands on the porcelain rim of one of the sinks, leaning heavily onto it, head hung low between his shoulders as he stares at his reflection. 

Still, he can't quite recognise the man staring back at him. Eyes lined with dark shadows, looking corpse-pale in the bathroom lighting. He cups water in his hands and scrubs it around his face, down his neck. He makes an attempt at fixing his hair, but gives up quickly. He thinks back to mirrors. What if he is somehow on the wrong side of it? It would explain why everything's so wrong. In a world in which half of Luther's body is that of an ape's, he's sure worlds split between mirror's are rational. Even if they weren't, they still are to him.

The man in the mirror blinks at him. His chest heaves beneath his shirt, his hands tremble on the rim of the sink. Klaus pulls his fist back and sends it into the mirror. It startles Ben, makes him jump as glass rains down like a waterfall in slow motion, filling up the sink and littering the nearby floor. Klaus stands in the mess, staring at the grimy wall where the mirror used to be. A few cuts litter his knuckles and sting distantly. 

He shuffles to the opposite side of the room, away from all the little splinters of mirror, and he lowers himself back onto the tiled floor. Slumping limply against the wall, Klaus finds his thumbnail between his teeth and eyes the graffiti on one of the stalls. He listens to the buzzing of the lights and the occasional car or odd sound outside, and he feels flames dance around his knees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I hope you enjoyed reading it!


	12. cool to the touch, leap to my death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a suicide attempt in this chapter - a little over half way through. It's rather brief and is wrapped up quickly, though, but I want to put the warning there.

The light stings his eyes.

Despite this, he cannot bring himself to look away. He feared he truly might never see the sun again, but here it has made its reappearance and he's flooded with relief. He doesn't want to let it out of his sight. He walks in the streets with his arms wrapped tightly around himself, shaking hands curled into the fur of his jacket, and his head ever tilted upwards into the rays of early morning sunlight as if basking in it, a forced smile upon his lips. It casted long shadows across the ground, morphing his own into something that seemed eight feet tall. He tried to ignore the way it blinked at him. It was hard to do so. He's never been so grateful to see the sun before. He wants it to chase away the chill in his bones. He can’t stop shaking. In Vietnam, the sun used to be merciless, unrelenting, bearing down upon them as they marched and ran and fought and crawled. He had gotten a tan from it. Charlie had been horrifically sunburnt. They had all despised the near insufferable heat until the rain had come, which then, of course they longed for the sun to return.

He had feared that the sun had abandoned him. He had feared it had gone down and kept going down and down and down, plunging the world into eternal darkness. Then he had begun to fear that not only had the sun abandoned him, but life in all senses. He was the last person on Earth, in some Godless, apocalyptic wasteland, and not only had the sun abandoned him but every other person, everything in which life, physical or spiritual, had left him alone. He had feared that the darkness would be all he would know. That it would turn devouring, mind consuming.

But the sun is back. The sun has not abandoned him and the streets are busy with people off to work and some teenagers out to get early buses to school, people opening up their shops. He is overjoyed to see it. He can deal with the idea of death, brutal or sudden, in any which way, but he thinks he might not be able to cope with eternal, devouring darkness.

He has come to a realisation as well, in his time wandering the streets. Thinking about the sun and the heat from Vietnam reminded him of the fire he feels inside of himself, on his heels, and the pure darkness had just linked these points, and it’s then in turn linked everything together. The room in his mind with all of those papers pinned on a wall, unable to be strung together with red yarn, is now complete. It all makes perfect sense. The fire he feels is not that of napalm in Vietnam, not that of some mind-devouring fire set alight inside his skull, but rather that of the fires of Hell. Hell has fire, does it not?

Reginald had not told them of religion, and so Klaus, none of them, have been religious, but Klaus worries that he ought to have been now. He had met that little girl, and now he fears that she had been God after all. And not just a God, but The God – the holy one, the all-knowing, all-powerful God. The same God whom had told him to his face that She didn’t like him. That monochromatic world must have been purgatory, or a version of Heaven. And if God exists, then Heaven must, and if Heaven exists, then so does Hell. And Hell is what is after him now – or perhaps he’s there already, but he’s being manipulated into lowering his guard, thinking he is in a safe space so that his memories of safety and happiness can be mocked and twisted. It explains everything so perfectly.

He tries to push down the rising panic upon this realisation, but it’s hard when he realises that the creatures chasing him are demons, and the people around him must be demons in disguise as well, just waiting to get the jump on him. But he has to act as if he hasn’t realised, or else there’s no point in prolonging this mocking state of reality. If he died and came back once, he must be able to do it again. He just needs to figure out how.

So he keeps walking. Allows his body to shake with the chill and allows the world to morph around him, for the trees to tower, for shadows to pound the thin walls of reality separating them from tearing him apart, for everyone’s eyes to stay on him, invasive, excited. It is not just the eyes he sees, too. He knows there are eyes that he can’t see. Eyes in tree leaves, eyes in pebbles, eyes in windows, in walls, on the wind. Eyes everywhere.

It’s painful to talk to Ben. He knows, now, this conjuration of Ben is either no more than an illusion, or it’s a demon. How is he supposed to act normal when a bloodthirsty monster is wearing his brother’s face? But he has to act, or it will know. He needs more time.

“Are you okay, Klaus?” Ben asks him. Klaus nods jerkily.

“Mhmm. I’m fine. Great. Doing great! Love the air. Just need… need to keep going,” he muses. He tries not to look at him, instead letting his eyes dance around the place, bouncing from the streetlamps to the windows.

“Please be honest with me, Klaus,” Ben asks, his voice so painfully sad and so real. Klaus bites his lip and looks away.

“I am. I am.” He knows. He knows. “Oh, look at that!” He exclaims, pointing a shaking finger down a street and hurrying down it as if there’s a place of interest. He throws a glance around the place, head tipping side to side. There’s a bakery that just opened, door open with a smell of pastries wafting out into the air around him. There’s a bookshop that has also just opened. A Starbucks, a butchers, a –

He hits something solid and staggers backwards, tripping over his own feet and landing on the pavement.

“Christ – watch where you’re fucking going, freak,” a man, dressed up in an incredibly expensive-looking suit, a phone to one ear, a briefcase in his other hand, hisses at him, disgust evident in the creases of his features.

For some reason it makes Klaus’ running mind to a quick halt, hitting a sudden wall, and his lips moving silently with no response coming to mind. He looks Klaus up and down, taking in the clothes, the bruises gathered from falling out of his own window, out of Patch’s, from passing out in alleyways and hard floors, the clinging remains of old makeup, the shadowed eyes.

The man scoffs, muttering something rude and dismissive into his phone, and steps around Klaus to continue on his way.

“Asshole,” Ben mutters, shaking his head. “Ignore him, Klaus.”

Klaus grunts his acknowledgement, fingers scrambling over the pavement as he heaves himself back onto his feet, sparing a glance at the man over his shoulder. He presses his lips together in a tight line, teeth gritting together. He forces himself onwards.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Ben asks him. Klaus hums.

“Just gotta keep going,” he replies with a half-hearted shrug. How long can he prolong this before they realise he knows? Before they get bored of taunting him in this world that is ever so slightly, maddeningly, wrong? It can’t be long now that he’s realised. For all he knows, they’re already catching on. There’s more out today, after all. Every alleyway he passes seems to be watching him, animalistic eyes peering out from the shadows with smirking fangs. They’re all watching him, they’re everywhere, and he needs to do something. Do what? What is he supposed to do? There’s no backdoor out of Hell and back to the land of the living. He can’t just pinch himself and wake up in his bed, all fine.

But there has to be a way out. A way home. Something. So he just has to keep going.

“Where to?” Ben prods. Klaus grits his teeth. Is it a trick question? Is he being interrogated? Fooled into letting it slip he knows what’s going on now?

“I don’t know,” says Klaus, eying Not-Ben suspiciously. “Why do you care? What do you want me to say?” He returns. Ben raises an eyebrow, hands waving defensively.

“I was just wondering,” he says. “No reason. Aren’t you tired? You’ve been walking and running for hours since yesterday.”

Klaus shrugs. “I’m fine,” he states coldly, arms folding a little tighter around himself. Ben falls silent, mulling in his own thoughts.

Klaus walks like the ground might shatter beneath his feet. As if he’s traversing a frozen lake that might crack if he steps wrong, too carelessly. He tip toes down the street as if he’s wandering a dark hallway at night and one creaking floorboard will be his demise. If he walks too hard, too heavy, too carelessly, it might draw attention. It might be the trigger to his own trap. What can he expect of Hell? Fire, he supposes. Eternal torment. Would he prefer death or would he prefer endless torture? He’s sure Hazel and Cha-Cha have nothing on creatures created for the soul purpose of causing agony. He probably can’t fathom what possible punishments await him. Things that could make him go insane better than a lifetime in the mausoleum could.

Would they make Ben do it? Make demons wear the faces of his family, of Dave? Would he be shackled down and intimately taken apart and put together again only to be torn apart again by those he loves? Perhaps they’d make him kill them. Make him watch them die over and over again and make their corpses kill him in justifiable revenge.

“Klaus-“

Klaus jerks out of reach of Ben’s fingertips, side stepping away from him and hitting a building instead. “Don’t,” he yelps, hands flying up as if to shield himself. Ben stopped immediately, hand hovering in the air and looking shocked.

“I won’t,” he says, gentle, “I won’t.” He won’t. He’ll do so much worse. Klaus’ breath catches in his throat. He looks around. Everyone’s looking at him. Shadows curl their heads around corners to stare at him. Ghosts stare at him. Demons stare at him. They know. Klaus turns on his heel and runs.

He bolts down the street. He smells smoke. The fire’s coming. He ducks his head as he hears things whistle over his head and crash into the overgrowth of Vietnam jungle around him. He trips up as the ground shakes with the explosion of a nearby bomb and he scrambles desperately to his feet, blinking away leaves to reveal skyscrapers, and he runs. There are things worse than death and he’s about to meet them. He runs.

There has to be something he can do, though. Somewhere he can go. Somewhere untouched, somewhere hidden, something he can exploit.

“There is,” the wind whispers, startlingly close, intimate on the shell of his ear, reminiscent to the way Dave’s breath warmed his cheek. “There is a way. A way to safety.”

He swings his head side to side. Crosses a street and narrowly avoids a vehicle, and scrambles to the other side of the road. He trips in his haste to avoid a hand reaching out of a shadow to grab him with talon-like claws, glistening, dripping with blood. The sun hides behind a cloud in disgust at him, shunning him. Where is it? The wind nudges him, ever so gently, ever so loving, and he follows it. He runs into a park. Wet grass squelches beneath his feet. It begins to rain, plastering his hair to his forehead. He blinks and he feels like a monsoon has begun in seconds and the tree he’s suddenly huddled beneath offers no comfort.

His eyes land on something. Distant, seen in glimpses between cars – is it dark again? He can’t tell – and only just within his sight. The wind nudges him. That’s it, it tells him, though not with a voice. His gut twists with certainty. Someone’s screaming again. But suddenly everything feels so distant, even if his legs burn with fire, and he can make his way through the park slowly, each footstep taken with care, with trepidation, with excitement.

There’s a bridge. A grey bridge with decorations in the walls either side of it and towering, twisting lampposts. There’s no cars on the bridge, not at the moment. Klaus places his hand over the short wall and throws a glance over. It’s high, erected above a narrow stream that must flow towards the park, perhaps. The stream looks like it might not even reach his knees. He can see stones. Water rushing over the stones like a marathon. Uncared for trees and bushes and flowers, and some trash. His chest heaves. He feels like he’s not stopped running for hours.

“Safe?” He asks the wind. The wind brushes his hair from his face like a mother’s loving hand and he leans into its touch, promising safety and security. Yes, this is where he can be safe, the wind says. Down there is safety. Down there is a way out. Down there is whatever he wants it to be.

“Will it hurt?” He asks the wind. It steals the words right out of his lips as if it is insulted he would dare accuse it of wishing him harm. He tilts his head up to the cloudy sky above him. Up there must be Life, and above that must be Heaven, but to go up he needs to go down. At least he’s never been particularly afraid of heights.

The wall of the bridge is short. It reaches below his hips. He plants both his hands on top of it and follows it with his legs, first on his knees, peering over the edge. Easy. It should be quick, and he’ll jolt awake in his bed and see his siblings – his real ones, not these malicious demons who want to see his blood and his bones stripped from him. He stands onto his feet, arms outstretched either side of him to balance. His limbs shake with excitement rather than fear.

“Klaus, shit, please, get down, Klaus, please, please, just look at me – get down, God, Klaus, please-“

Klaus cracks his eyes open to look at ‘Ben’ standing below him, looking like he might pass out. Klaus grins fiercely, leaning close. ‘Ben’ nods encouragingly. Klaus notices this demon has learned how to cry at some point. It’s almost realistic. Almost convincing.

“God isn’t here, and you know that,” he hisses. “You can’t lie to me anymore.”

He takes a step back. There’s agony, and then there’s nothing.

 

 

Ben screams. The sound is torn from his throat when Klaus vanishes from view, and he launches himself at the wall of the bridge, panting for air he can’t find and technically doesn’t need, though he feels like he does. There’s a sickening thud a second after Klaus steps back, one that echoes in his skull and makes him moan and feel like he might be sick.

He peers over the edge after several moments where he can’t bring himself to do it. The sight makes him screw his eyes shut, swallow, and then run. He runs off the bridge, sliding down the hill and to the bottom, leaves skid marks in the mud in his wake. He falls onto his knees.

He looks so pale. Soaked to the bone, his legs in the stream, upper body stretched out over rough stones and onto the mud bank. Blood trickles from the corner of his lips and has already begun to soak his hair. His neck is twisted. His eyes are open and vacant, staring through Ben. Somehow they manage to look more coherent than they had two minutes ago.

Ben can’t move one hand away from his mouth, but his other one repeats the motion of trying to grab his brother’s shoulder. His hand just keeps falling through his shoulder. “Klaus,” he whispers, for he can’t raise his voice above that, “Klaus, please. Please. Get up, Klaus, get up. Klaus – please-“ He cuts himself off, heaving a ragged breath.

He had just done it so suddenly. He had woken up in the bathroom, washed his face and left. He had seemed quieter than usual, but he still spoke to him. Ben had hoped he was perhaps getting better. Evidently not completely with it, but at least somewhat aware of everything.

He isn’t sure what went wrong. He isn’t sure what he meant before he jumped.

He wipes at his eyes, still trying and failing to grab his shoulder or his arm or his hand. He can’t leave him, but he longs to know where the rest of their siblings are. Will they find him? He’s far from the Academy. How his legs don’t hurt from walking and running so much is beyond him. Will Klaus come back as a ghost too? Will he be tied to the bridge like other ghosts they’ve seen? Doomed to sit, hunched at the bottom or the top, watching people go by, occasionally stuck in a loop of recreating his own death.

He feels utterly shell-shocked, staring at his corpse and waiting for something to happen. He watches the fur of his coat soak with blood.

 

 

“Didn’t expect to see you here again.”

Klaus peels his eyes open slowly. He feels electricity run through his veins at that voice and he knows. It worked.

He lifts himself off the ground and peers around. He’s sitting in a field. Grass tickles his skin. “Surprise,” he says, and he finally finds Her. She’s sitting on a nearby bench, twirling a straw in a glass of lemonade.

“What are you doing here?” She asks, voice emotionless. Klaus stares at Her.

“I’m sure you already know that.” Will She just send him right back? Kick him back to Hell and cut out the taunting and get straight to the damnation and eternal pain part of Hell? His hands shake.

“Well, I’m aware that you killed yourself, yes,” She scoffs.

“I got out,” corrects Klaus. “And now you’re going to send me home.”

“And why ever would I do that?” She responds, eyebrow quirked. She swoops Her hair behind one of Her ears.

“Because I’m not going back there. Let me go home,” he demands, his teeth grinding together. She sighs, averting Her gaze.

“Where were you before?” She asks. Klaus stares at Her. She stares back just as readily.

“I was in Hell,” he replies, the words choking out of his throat. “And I found a way out. Send me home.”

She hums thoughtfully, as if weighing his sanity and Her boredom in Her hands. What’s more important to Her? Being generous or entertaining Herself with his demise and unravelling? His heart pounds furiously in his ears. It sounds like his own fists banging the mausoleum doors.

“And how do I know you’re not going to just go kill yourself again?” She asks. Klaus glares at her.

“Because I obviously won’t. Contrary to apparent popular belief; I don’t want to die,” he states. She hums again. Sips Her lemonade.

“I never said that you want to,” She points out. Klaus presses his lips together.

“I just want to go home,” Klaus insists, quieter. She eyes him.

“I think you don’t know what you want. You want what you can’t have and when you have it you push it away.”

Klaus’ jaw clenches. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know you don’t.” She looks away, eying the colourless sky overhead. “You keep dying like this, Klaus, there’s going to be consequences. I can only throw you back so many times. Humans can only die so many times.”

“What’s once more?” Klaus asks. She looks him up and down.

“I don’t want to see you again, Klaus,” She tells him, and the world curls in on itself at Her will, twisting itself into something new. Something painful.

He gasps for air. His mouth tastes like copper. His body feels like a warzone. He’s freezing, trembling from the gold, soaked to the bone, and the smell and taste of copper is overwhelming. His lungs feel like they’re on fire and he hacks, blood dribbling past his lips.

“Klaus – Klaus – shit, shit, Klaus, what – take it easy, slow down, Klaus-“

Ben’s voice filters through to his ears slowly, gradually, as does the feeling of grass and stones beneath him as he rolls onto his stomach. His fingers curl into his jacket, desperate to find something to hold onto. Stars taunt his vision and that’s the last thing to come to him. Slowly, he realises he can see grass and stones and a stream winding away from him, a steep hill to either side of himself, hear cars in the distance and feel rain filtering through leaves to tap his skin.

His eyes bounce around his surroundings, on the trees, glistening mud, the red on his hands, on Ben. His ears are ringing and he can’t exactly make out what it is that he’s saying. He tries to analyse himself. His back aches. His ribs, he knows, are broken, or they must be at least. His head feels as if someone has cracked it open with an axe. His lungs feel as if duct tape has been placed over a hole in them and blood has pooled inside of them. His hips burn. He tries his tongue in his mouth, tries to say Ben’s name, but can only make an incoherent groan slip out.

He watches headlights cast odd shadows through the trees as cars pass by overhead. He can’t bring himself to move. He doesn’t even try. He curls up ever so slightly, dragging his heavy legs out of the stream and closer to his stomach. Moments blur together in the time it takes him to blink. He lets it. He watches the water by his feet run gently over stones in the stream, listens to it and tries to focus on that. At one point, he watches the sky through the trees turn orange as the sun sets.

He’s slept in worse. He’s slept with bombs shaking the ground too dangerously close to him. He’s slept virtually standing up with a loaded rifle in his hands. He’s slept while the images of Dave, choking on his own blood, are fresh on his eyelids, and while corpses have screamed endlessly at him. He can deal with it for a little longer until the haze in his head recedes slightly, if it ever chooses to do so.

“It’s not safe to stay out here at night like this,” the man beside him tells him. He hasn’t left his side, Klaus thinks, though he seems unable to help him. Maybe he’s a ghost. He feels sorry for him, but he’s somewhat grateful for his presence. It’s ever so slightly comforting.

“Can’t move,” Klaus mumbles when he manages to move his tongue. He probably can move, it’d just hurt so horribly that he doesn’t want to. He’ll deal with the cold of being soaked and laying outside instead of the pain.

“I know it hurts, Klaus, but you have to try. Get out of here and by the road and get some help. Please,” the man insists. Klaus wonders how he knows his name. He decides he doesn’t care; at least he’s nice.

Slowly, painfully, Klaus pulls one hand away from his chest. It jars him and the pain that had become a distant throbbing ache rushes forth, eager to grab his attention. He stretches his arm out above his head, digging his nails into the mud and leaves. He shifts slowly, enough to dig his heels into the floor. He pushes and pulls himself up. He hardly moves two feet before he stops, hissing between his teeth, eyes screwed shut.

He pulls his legs up, shifting onto his knees. Finds his hands beneath him and pushes his torso off the floor.

He got shot, once. In Vietnam. It had been in his thigh, luckily not hitting anything major, but they had just jumped from a chopper and into some deserted town, and there was nowhere for medical care nearby. He had sucked it up and held his position, and when they had to move, he had helped to carry Tommy, with a wound worse than his own. He had been sweating and shaking and tired, but he had kept going.

Dave had called him an idiot when they regrouped. Klaus smiles at the memory, the fond smile on Dave’s face, the way the rest of his division had seen him as a brother, someone trustworthy and responsible. If he could fight with a bullet imbedded inside himself, he could walk now, and if not that then he could crawl.

Admittedly, though, he hadn’t been this cold in Vietnam.

He turns his head up towards the top of the hill. He just needs up there. Find some pharmacy or a gas station or any shop that might have some painkillers and bandages small enough he can hide under his jacket easily and get away with.

His grip slips at one point and he throws his hands out with blind panic to stop himself from sliding all the way back down to the stream. He pants with exertion, tries to steady his breathing and calm himself again. His head spins. That man tells him he’s doing good again.

It takes him what he assumes is probably a long time to claw his way out of that trench, although it’s a nonstop battle for him. When the land flattens out in front of him and he can see grass melt into pavement and into road, he lets himself fall onto his back, panting for air. He isn’t sure if the drop rolling down his neck is water, sweat or dislodged blood.

The world spins overhead, distorted, like a blurred watercolour image. The mess of streetlights, traffic lights and shop signs is pretty. He blinks, and it blurs even further. He wants to reach his hand out and dip it into the world as if it’s a puddle, and he wants to stir it together into some incoherent, fever dream vision.

“It’s not a good idea to lay beside the road like that, Klaus. Someone might phone the police, or an ambulance. Not that I don’t think you really need a hospital, but that might just do more harm,” murmurs the man. Klaus rolls his gaze over to him. He blinks him into clarity.

“Hnh,” he says. The man looks tired. Exhausted, really. As exhausted as Klaus feels.

“There might be a homeless shelter nearby with space. You can at least shower there, Klaus. Stay inside for the night. Get some bandages.”

“Dunno,” mumbles Klaus. He forces himself to sit up, slouching over his lap and staring at his hands. They’re covered in mud and blood. It’s uncomfortable. He picks at it, tries to rub his hands clean. It doesn’t work. The dirt’s all seeped into the creases and wrinkles of his skin. He probably won’t get it out without a thorough cleaning, and there’s no water around him unless he wants to slide back down to the stream.

He heaves himself onto his feet again. It isn’t late, some shops still open down the street, but he must be in a more obscure area. He can hear and see people, but none come close enough to look at him or see him more than a drunk homeless person sitting on the side of the road. He staggers down the pavement, picking at the dirt in his hands. It’s dizzying to watch his feet move and to see buildings move past him as he walks and he tries not to watch it.

He risks a glance up. He sees an open shop and he stumbles into it, ignoring the cashier. He heads to the back, slouching as he searches. There’s painkillers and band-aids and wrist and ankle supports. He eyes the painkillers, shaking the box in his hand, and then he eyes the band-aids. He doesn’t think they’ll help at all.

He feels terribly thirsty. He doesn’t think he’s drank in a while, or eaten anything either. He throws a glance around – the cashier is a disinterested woman who smelled of nicotine when he passed her by, and she’s more focused on her phone – and he slips the painkillers into his pocket. He looks for the drinks and places his hands onto his hips, then reaches for a mini bottle of water, holding it between his chest and his arm, hidden beneath his jacket. It chills his already frigid skin.

He lingers for a moment, eying the food. Although he feels hungry, his stomach rocks with nausea that the pain helps not one bit with. He forgoes it. His eyes catch a jewellery stand and he pauses. He feels as if someone he knows would like one of the rings it has hung up on it, though he can’t remember who. He takes it anyway. He eyes the cashier – still not looking – before he goes to the door, head down, watching his feet. As he steps outside, an alarm goes off. He jumps, gasping as his ribs tear his attention back to pain, blessed pain that  never wants to leave his side, and then he runs.

He doesn’t run for long this time. He can’t. Black dots dance in his vision and he can’t breathe without tasting blood, so he throws himself into an alleyway as far away as he can get, falling in a heap at the back of the alleyway. His breath hitches, face scrunched up, and he digs out the painkillers with shaking fingers and takes more than whatever the recommended dose is, for he knows the recommended dose does nothing for him, and he follows it down with the water he stole, the entire bottle gone quickly, blissful on his dry throat. He lets the bottle tumble from his hands, discarded on the floor, and he hopes the painkillers kick in soon enough.

The man tells him there’s a shelter nearby. Klaus doesn’t care. He’s exhausted himself as it is, and he it’s not as if he can feel his legs anyway. He lets the man drone on about safety and alleyways. The world beyond the alleyway distances itself away from him, puts more space between them. He’s content with it. He’s content to fade out of existence for a while, for he doesn’t really feel real. He’s fine with being less than a ghost for the time being, fine with being forgotten in an alleyway. The floor is cool against his flush and damp skin. He feels a bit like a corpse again, although what with all the dirt he supposes he’s the corpse in later stages of its burial. The idea makes him snort, and then cough and wheeze for air.

Exhausted, he rolls onto his least painful side, wraps his wet jacket around himself, and tries not to exist. It isn’t hard to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear the siblings are coming soon!


	13. with broken wrists, I climb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

There is a floor beneath him. He realises this through a variety of means. He realises it because he knows he cannot stand, so he must be laying down, and he knows he didn't go inside any buildings and no one brought him into any buildings either, so he’s on the floor. It’s rough and unforgiving, a stone lodged beneath his stomach and one beneath his hips, but he can’t bring himself to move. The floor stretches out in front of him for miles. It’s dark where he is – it is always dark, and Klaus can feel the way it creeps up on him and he’s helpless to stop it – and it doesn’t seem much brighter ahead of him, either.

The painkillers must be fake for they’ve done nothing. Each breath is agony. His head feels wet again. He’s freezing to the bone. Either the painkillers are fake or there’s someone actively twisting all his bruises, squeezing his bones, stealing his warmth. He doesn’t do anything about it. He fears that his eyes will close and not open again, so he keeps them open, unfocused, staring blindly ahead of himself.

The man’s still there. He keeps close to Klaus, like a lookout, watching the entrance to the alleyway. Klaus is grateful for his presence. He doesn’t want to be alone.

“Klaus,” says the man, “you need help. Please, just – just come out of the alleyway and let someone help you,” he insists. Klaus huffs a breath in acknowledgement and then regrets it when it jars his ribs and his lungs. He feels as if someone’s grabbed a claw, sharper than a lion’s or a bear’s, and stirred his insides with it to try and make a cocktail with his organs. He doesn’t know how this man expects him to move.

He remains on the floor, where he’s sure he’ll remain for the rest of time. He wants more water. He wants a blanket.

“Klaus,” says the man again. Klaus briefly flicks his eyes towards him. “Can you… can you try and manifest me?”

So he is a ghost. At least that clears things up, Klaus thinks. He hums. He doesn’t think he’s got the energy to do it. Nonetheless, he shifts so that he can bring his hands away from his torso, curling them into tighter fists and trying to focus. His hands fizz and spluttering like a dying light in a school’s basement, and he knows it won’t hold for long, but it’s long enough for the man to hurry to Klaus’ side. His hands hover over him briefly before resting, gently, slowly, on his shoulders, carding through his hair. Klaus sighs, his eyes sliding closed. The man sits close to him and Klaus can feel his thigh against his forehead. He can feel the man shaking.

“You’ll be okay,” he tells him, “you’ll be okay. I’m sorry I – I don’t know how to help you,” he stammers. He sounds like he’s crying. Klaus reaches a shakily hand up until he can find one of his, curling his fingers around his. The man is quick to latch onto him, almost painfully.

“Don’t… don’t cry,” Klaus breathes out. It has the opposite effect, for the man chokes on a sob. Klaus squeezes his hand. The man tries to wipe some dirt off his face. The touch is soothing, blissful, comforting, and he can almost disconnect from all the pain to focus on that.

“Don’t leave,” he mumbles. “Don’t leave me. Please.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” the man promises, squeezing his hand in his own. “I’m right here.”

Time is a fickle thing. He doesn’t understand it. It passes by slowly or too fast sometimes, but it all is the same time. It’s easy for 2019 to blend with 1968 and 2002. He can relive a month in the span of two seconds and he can lose six hours to blinking. He doesn’t understand how time works, how it weaves around and in itself, how it interacts with everything. He can’t wrap his mind around it. He watches time slip away from him but can’t bring himself to try and fight it. At some point, he stops feeling the man’s hand in his and in his hair, but he can still hear him during the periods in which awareness hits him like a bus and fights for breath, whimpers sliding from his lips in his fear and confusion, and the man comforts him with kind words.

Occasionally he tells him he ought to try and get out and find help, but those become few and far between when he realises Klaus can’t sit up, let alone stand and walk around.

“Is it peaceful?” Klaus asks him once.

“Is what peaceful?”

“Being a ghost.”

The man looks away, sucking in a breath. “Not really. I think I’m more… grounded than other ghosts are. I don’t know what it’s like for the others, though. Why?”

Klaus sighs. “It’s never peaceful,” he murmurs. His fingers flex over the ground, rubbing over loose stones.

“I know,” offers the man. “But you’re doing good, yeah. You are.”

Klaus frowns when his fingers fall through his knee, but he can’t manifest him. “What happened?” Klaus asks.

“What?”

“Everything hurts.”

The man looks away. He blinks furiously, rubs at his eyes.

“It doesn’t matter Klaus. Not right now,” he says shakily. “Just try and rest if you can’t move.”

Klaus nods slightly, letting his gaze slide away again. It’s not hard to let his focus slip away too, to let time tick away. He hardly registers car horns on nearby roads, can’t muster fear whenever he hears someone walk by the alleyway. He’s cocooned in the shadows, hidden beneath an embrace of darkness.

He doesn’t have a plan in his mind. He knows, distantly, that he can’t stay here. He can’t remain in this alleyway for much longer. His mind is fuzzy for a variety of reasons and he knows none of them are good. His clothes are still soaked, heavy, sticking to his body, and he thinks that perhaps the way his coat clings to his arms is the only reason the opened stitches on his arms have stopped – or just slowed, he isn’t sure and he can’t look. But he can’t bring himself to get up. Not even when he returns to awareness sharply and sudden, inexplicable terror seizes him, and the man with him has to guide him away from a panic attack and further injury. Not when every instinct in him screams to run. All he can do is simply curl his hands into fists and wait eagerly for awareness to leave him again.

 

 

“Klaus, do you trust me? Listen to me, Klaus, please, just trust me here-“

Klaus blinks slowly, an attempt to clear his blurred vision. The man is crouched over him, failing to shake him gently. It’s bright outside with early sun. He grunts his acknowledgement, tipping his head back to try and get a better look at him. His blurred face swims closer. “Do you trust me?” He asks again. Klaus nods his head. “Good, good. Listen, there are people coming to help you, okay? You need to let them. No matter what you think, you need to let them help you. I promise that’s all they want to do. I promise. Can you manifest me? I – I need to get them.”

Klaus doesn’t really follow what he’s saying. But he has been talking about help for as long as he can remember, and he’s done his best to be there for him, so he has to trust him. He tries to manifest him, tries to focus whatever energy he can and offer it to the man, but he can’t. It doesn’t work, but leaves him shaking and panting. “I can’t,” he moans, shaking his head, “I can’t do it, I can’t.” Hot tears sting his eyes and he rests his head back onto the ground. He shakes his head until the dizziness makes him nauseous . He can’t manifest this man and he can’t get up, can hardly feel his legs and his hips.

“It’s okay,” says the man, “it’s okay, it’s okay. They’ll find you – just let them help, okay?” He insists. Klaus scrubs at his eyes, grinding his teeth together. He almost wants to just be left alone. He wants to just drift away from himself, to just forget about everything. The man continues to murmur soft words to him, constantly disappearing to peer out of the alleyway before hurrying back. Klaus brushes over his comments, focusing instead on trying to breathe. He curls his hands into the sticky fur of his coat, trying to pull it tighter around himself.

There’s voices in the street, hollering at one another. Boots scuff the pavement, come close to the alleyway. Stop inside, take a step away, then come right back.

“Klaus? Klaus, is that you?” Footsteps scuffle closer and a man slides onto his knees in front of him. “Oh shit, thank God, we’ve been looking – Klaus?” A hand rests on his shoulder and then quickly pulls back. It goes to his face instead, holding his jaw and tilting his head to the side. He flinches, face scrunched up, but doesn’t squirm away. “Are you awake? Klaus, can you hear me? What the fuck happened?”

“It’s okay, Klaus,” says the familiar man. He forces his shoulders to relax and nods his head.

“You’re freezing – Christ. Shit, right. Can you stand up? Can you open your eyes?” He tries. His eyes peel heavily open. A man is crouched right in front of him, clad in all black, with wide, soft eyes. He peers close, studying Klaus’ face, looking him up and down. “Can you stand?” He repeats.

“Please don’t hurt me,” Klaus utters. The new man looks hurt but he shakes his head.

“I’m not going to,” he says. He dips a hand into his pockets, pulling out a phone. “Just hold on, it’s okay, it’s okay.” He hits numbers on his phone and when he begins to talk again, Klaus turns away. He looks up instead, through the incoherent grey smudge of buildings either side of him. It seems that the sun has returned, and yet it’s still dark, shoved away in this little forgotten corner of the world, this dark place dedicated for Klaus that feels like a corner disconnected from the rest of life.

 

 

They get the call in the early morning. They’re hardly awake, sitting at the table with Grace’s breakfast in front of them. Without Klaus, it’s near silent. There was nothing to be found that night, and a whole day has passed. Klaus’ face has been on the news and no one’s seen him. He’s not done something drastic to bring attention to himself. He seems to have just disappeared off the radar completely.

Diego’s phone rings. He startles, quick to reach for it and answer it.

“Who-“

“We might have a lead,” says Eudora. Diego sits up.

“What?”

“We might have a lead for Klaus,” she repeats.

“Where?”

“I’ll send you the address.” She hangs up after that and Diego’s faced with his siblings all staring expectantly at him.

“Eudora says she might have a lead on Klaus,” he says, rising quickly to his feet. His phone buzzes in his hand with a street address he’s never heard of.

“Let’s go,” says Allison, quickly rising to her feet. “Where is he?”

Diego shakes his head. His gut twists. “She just said it was a lead, I don’t know.”

“Then we ought to hurry up,” Five says. Luther and Vanya stand up too. Diego eyes them briefly before he nods.

“I’ll take my car and follow you,” Allison says. She hurries out into the corridor, going to fetch her coat.

“Are you all finished breakfast?” Grace asks, her head tipped to the side.

“Yeah. Thanks, mom,” Vanya offers gently, tucking her chair under the dining table.

“Come on,” says Diego. “We’ll be back soon, mom,” he tells her, hurrying from the kitchen to grab his own coat with his car keys in the pocket.

“Oh, okay. I’ll have snacks for you,” Grace says behind him. He pulls his coat on and by the time he reaches his car to unlock it, Five’s in the passenger’s seat.

“Took you long enough,” Five comments. Diego rolls his eyes with a scoff, sliding into the driver’s seat. First he sets up his sat-nav, because he’s never heard of the street that Eudora’s sent him, and his stomach twists when he sees it’s over an hour’s drive away.

“How does he get so far?” Diego mutters, starting his car up. Allison waits in her car for him to take the lead on the road.

“He’s a runner,” shrugs Five. “It’s what he does.”

He knows that if there’s a thing Klaus is good at, it’s running. But nonetheless it doesn’t make the fact easier to deal with. His hands grip the steering wheel almost painfully as he follows the directions through the city. It’s a long enough drive, let alone getting there on foot. He pulls to a stop down the street, phone in hand and calling Eudora’s number. It rings twice before she picks up.

“I’m here,” he says. “Where are you?”

“Do you see the corner shop? Come in,” she says. His eyes sweep around the place before finding the shop and he sees her standing by the door.

“Alright, give me a second,” Diego says. He finds his stomach twisting with anxiety. He knows Klaus isn’t in that shop.

Allison’s car pulls in behind his and her, Vanya and Luther hurry out. “Where is he?” Luther asks. Diego says nothing but jerks his head towards the shop, leading the way to Eudora. His hand clenches and unclenches in an anxious tic.

“What’ve you got?” He asks.

“Come take a look at this,” she says, eying all of his siblings as does the cashier, and then she leads them into a backroom. “He was here around half seven last night-“

“Last night?” Diego repeats. “Why didn’t we know?” At half seven last night he had been in the Academy, warm, with Grace handing him dinner.

“It wasn’t reported until later,” says Eudora.

“ _What_ wasn’t reported and why?”

“He stole a couple of things from here. Cashier didn’t want to report it because she didn’t want involved with whatever he had going on, apparently.”

“Why would he steal something?” Luther asks, eyebrows furrowed.

“It was water and painkillers,” Eudora dismisses. She leads them to an old computer, all of them crowding around it to see some grainy, black and white security footage. Diego shoves his way to the front, watching with wide eyes as she presses play.

The store’s empty. The cashier is on her phone and nothing seems to happen. Then the door swings open and a man staggers drunkenly inside. His hair’s a mess, clothes covered in what looks like dirt, and he holds an arm around his torso. His eyes bounce around the place rapidly, his chest heaves. His whole body shakes and he stumbles over himself as he walks around the store. First he grabs the painkillers, stuffing them into his pocket. A hand on the shelves steadies him as he eyes a rack of cheap jewellery, and he stuffs a ring into his pocket, and then he goes to the drinks in the back and takes a small bottle of water, hiding it in his jacket. Then he stumbles to the door, seems to brace himself, and steps out. There’s a moment where he jumps in which Diego suspects an alarm went off, and then Klaus is gone, having sprinted out of frame.

He leans closer, rewinding the footage and staring closely at Klaus. With the poor quality and the black and white of the footage, it’s hard to tell how he’s doing, but he walks as if he’s either drunk or in pain – and, considering the painkillers, Diego assumes the latter – and he looks as if he’s half covered in mud.

“He’s hurt,” says Vanya, looking around at them all.

“He can’t have gone far then,” Allison states.

“Just far enough to hide,” says Five, looking thoughtful.

“We need to go look for him.” Luther lifts his chin up a little more, squaring his shoulders. “If he’s hurt, we need to find him.”

“Shouldn’t have left him alone in the first place,” Diego sighs, running his hands through his hair. Two days and he’s somehow managed to end up half way across the city on foot and injured. He shoves his way out of the room and back onto the street and looks it up and down as if he might be able to see his footsteps, find a trail.

“We’ll split up,” he says as he hears everyone else hurry outside behind him. “Search around. Take the car and go further out, even. Who knows if he even stopped running,” he mutters. He feels anger flare in his veins. It’s been over twelve hours. He could be anywhere. They could have found him by now had the cashier said something earlier.

There’s nothing he can do now for it. He simply ignores whatever it is that Luther says, already on the way down the street.

He checks a public bathroom. It’s empty. He eyes shops as he walks by, looks into cafes, peers into every alleyway. It’s tedious and slow going, checking every nook and cranny, and he almost feels silly. He’s out here looking for his fully grown brother and having to check alleyways and peer behind dumpsters. At least, he thinks, he’s not the fully grown man who’s probably more used to sleeping on an alleyway floor rather than a bed. It makes his stomach twist. God knows Klaus has a lot unaddressed problems that stem even from his time out of the Academy.

And now he’s got more.

He grits his teeth and checks another alleyway. Empty. He kicks a dumpster. No one jumps out.

He checks another alleyway. There’s a heap of trash at the back. He keeps walking. He stops, backtracks to the alley. “Klaus?” He calls. “Klaus, is that you?” He comes close, taking tentative steps, his heart thudding beneath his ribs. There’s long, leather-clad legs and a fur-clad torso, messy dark hair. “Oh, shit, thank God,” he breathes, hurrying closer to him and dropping onto his knees. “We’ve been looking-“ Klaus doesn’t move. He listens carefully for a moment. Raspy, wheezing breathing greets his ears. “Klaus?”

He doesn’t seem to register that he’s even there. He’s curled up, hands close to his chest, eyes screwed shut, face pinched, body shaking. He sets a hand on his shoulder only to retract it quickly when he feels that it’s wet and sticky. He peers at his hand. Traces of deep red mottle where he touched him. Whatever relief he had felt is suddenly gone, replaced by worry.

He reaches out, grasping his jaw instead and lifting his head slightly, tilting it to the side. Klaus flinches, although it’s delayed, but he stays relatively limp in his grasp and doesn’t resist. “Are you awake? Klaus, can you hear me? What the fuck happened?” The words tumble from his lips before he can really think about it, his eyes roaming him up and down.

He’s freezing to the touch, skin icy cold, almost damp. His neck is a mottle of violent bruising, as if someone huge has strangled him with all their weight, or if he had went and had it snapped and somehow fixed it. There’s dried blood from his lips, smudged around his mouth and chin, and when Diego moves his hand back to try and support his head upon Klaus not doing it himself, his hair is sticky and matted like the fur of his coat. His hands are slick with blood, some dried, some only partially dried, and his breathing sounds laboured, pained with each breath. There’s mud coating his clothes and skin as well, his skin deathly pale, and Diego can’t fathom what in the world happened to him short than getting hit by a bus. At least Klaus nods his head in what Diego hopes is an answer to one of his questions.

“You’re freezing – Christ. Shit, right. Can you stand up? Can you open your eyes?” He rambles, thumbs rubbing his cheeks. Klaus’ eyes flicker beneath his eyelids before they slowly slide open. His eyes look glossy and they don’t focus on him. “Can you stand?” Diego asks him again. He eyes the way he holds his hands to his chest, tries to look at his legs and his ankles to see if he holds them awkwardly as well.

Klaus licks his lips and swallows, taking in a ragged, short breath. “Please don’t hurt me,” he breathes. A shiver runs down his spine, steals his face to contort it in pain briefly. Diego’s stomach drops and he has to look away.

“I’m not going to,” he says, a gentle whisper in return. “Just hold on, it’s okay, it’s okay.” He shuffles closer, sitting on the floor with one hand still holding his head, other hand reaching for his phone in his pocket. He pulls it out, typing out a quick message and sending it to everyone else, and then he phones Luther. His phone rings and rings and rings like some death tone before finally answering.

“I’ve found him,” Diego says.

“Where is he?” Luther asks. “How is he?”

“Alley opposite…” He peers out, eyes narrowed. “Opposite a pharmacy, just right up the street. He’s… tell Allison to bring her car. We need to get him home.”

He hears Luther huff a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. I’ll be there in a second,” he says before hanging up. Diego returns his attention to Klaus. He’s look up at the sky with a vacant look to his eyes, lips parted ever so slightly. Has he been here since he ran from the shop? How had no one noticed him? Noticed what condition he was in?

Diego tips his head so he’s looking at him again. He blinks rapidly, eyes settling on Diego’s face. “Where are you hurt, Klaus? What happened?” He asks. His eyes flick to the bruising like a thick scarf around his neck.

Klaus sighs, eyes slipping closed. “Everywhere,” he mutters. “Dunno. Can’t remember. Won’t tell me.”

“Who won’t tell you?” Diego asks, eyes narrowed. Had he been jumped like he’d feared? Argued with the wrong people, wandered down the wrong street? The idea of someone beating Klaus while he’s like this makes anger flare up in him again and he has to look away and take in a steadying breath.

“Nice guy,” Klaus breathes. “’s a ghost.”

Ben, thinks Diego. He looks around the alleyway as if he expects to see him. Klaus’ lips twitch. “He says hi.”

“Hey,” croaks Diego, throat suddenly dry. The mentions of Ben have yet to get much easier after years of thinking Klaus was lying about him being there, of mourning his death. He turns back to Klaus and tries to think about why Ben won’t tell Klaus what happened. It’s not a promising thought.

“What’s hurt worse, Klaus? Is anything broken?” Diego asks, tapping his cheek gently. Klaus hums.

“Probably. Can’t breathe. ‘s a lot of blood. Cold. Dark.” Diego narrows his eyes.

“We’ll get you sorted,” he says. “You’ll be okay, it’s okay.”

Klaus doesn’t respond. He huffs a breath and keeps his eyes closed, head heavy in Diego’s hands.

It doesn’t take long for Luther (accompanied by the others) to arrive, thankfully. He hurries into the alleyway and Five is the only one to stop the others from doing so too and crowding Klaus, clearly remembering the last time he freaked out when he was crowded.

“Oh, God,” murmurs Luther, stopping a few feet away from them all. “What happened to him?” He asks. He takes slow, careful steps closer. Diego shrugs.

“He can’t remember and Ben won’t tell him,” he reports. “Something’s up with his ribs or his lungs, he must have hit his head, and his neck…” He trails off. There’s not much to say about it except to gesture at it, where not an inch of pale skin can be seen between the bruises. “I think he must have reopened his stitches again too.”

“Is he awake?” He asks, kneeling beside him. His jaw clenches as he looks him up and down. Diego shrugs.

“He was. I’m not sure anymore. He’s… not with us, yet. Not quite. He didn’t freak out though. You need to lift him,” he says. Luther swallows, hands flexing over his knees before he nods. Carefully, he comes closer, sliding one arm beneath his knees. Diego moves so he can come close, gently placing his head down again. Klaus doesn’t stir.

He does stir, however, when Luther tries to slide an arm beneath his back. He gasps, eyes blowing wide open and frantic. He lifts his hands to shove at Luther, a cacophony of half-coherent words tumbling past his lips.

“Stop, stop, don’t, please stop, please stop, please, please, you’re hurting me, stop-“

His fingers curl into Luther’s coat, staining it red and brown, though he never looks at him. When Luther lifts him off the floor and shifts his grip to hold him better, he cries out, and the sound dissolves into a short sob. He presses his lips together, eyes screwed shut, head hanging limp over Luther’s arm. He breathes heavily, head turned away, and he nods. “I do,” he mutters breathlessly, “I do, I do.”

Klaus remains tense but at least compliant in Luther’s arms, muttering incoherently beneath his breath as he’s carried out of the alley, past their siblings, and towards Allison’s waiting car, back doors already open.

“Oh, God,” breathes Vanya, along with Allison. Diego rounds the car to help arrange Klaus into the backseat of Allison’s car. It takes drawn out moments for Klaus to pry his fingers free from Luther’s coat, and then in turn immediately twists them into his own coat. In the direct sunlight, his poor condition’s easier to see. His coat’s dark with blood, and the side and back of his neck is bathed in it, leaking out from somewhere hidden beneath his hair. Where mud and blood don’t stain him, he still seems wet, as if he’d been caught out in the rain or had been laying in a puddle.

“Vanya and Five, come in my car. Allison and Luther, take him home.” His fingers itch to be in the car with him, to be able to see for himself that he’s fine, but he doesn’t want to jostle him in being carried all the way back to Diego’s car.

Allison touches his arm. “We’ll meet you there,” she says. “He’ll be okay for the drive.”

Diego glances back at Klaus, face turned into the seats, shoulders hunched high by his ears. Diego swallows, nods, and turns away.

“Yeah, I know. I know,” he utters, scrubs a hand down his face – the one that isn’t still sticky with remnants of tacky blood. “We’ll meet you back at home,” he adds, and he begins to walk down the pavement, urging Vanya to follow after him. Five disappears in a flash of blue, presumably already sitting in his car.

“What happened to him?” Vanya asks, hurrying to keep up with his long strides. “He-“

“I don’t know,” Diego cuts her off. “He doesn’t remember. We just need to get him home so mom can look at him, and he’ll be fine. He’ll be okay,” he states, looking ahead of him. Sure enough, Five is sitting in the passenger’s seat. Vanya climbs into the backseat, clicking in her seatbelt. She doesn’t speak up again, nor does Five. Eudora’s standing by his car.

“We found him,” he tells her, hand lingering over his door handle. “We’re taking him home. He’s with Allison.”

“How is he?” She asks. Diego presses his lips together.

“Hurt bad. We don’t know what happened. He’ll be fine.” He opens his door and then pauses, turning to her again. “Thank you.”

She offers him a smile. “Make sure he’s alright, okay?” She returns. She leaves him with a pat on his shoulder, hand lingering for a moment before turning around and walking back down the street.

Diego starts his car and drags blood over his steering wheel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the siblings are here! And I've come to the realisation that I'm unable to write a character who isn't constantly either hallucinating or disassociated so I can write a shit ton of metaphors and imagery, RIP to Diego's POV :(  
> Also shout out to when I thought this fic would be, like, 20K words, whoops


	14. twisted by something

Klaus does his best not to move much in the backseat of the car. He stays, shivering, muttering occasionally, and, for once, compliant. He doesn't seem to freak out around them, and Luther can't decide whether or not that's a good thing. He can't make out what it is he's saying, the words too incoherent, too quiet to be much more than a rushed whisper, a half-hearted mutter. 

Luther turns to watch him as Allison drives. It hurts to look at him and yet he fears that he might disappear again if he looks away.

He has no idea what happened to him. He can't begin to fathom what might have happened - covered in mud and blood and tossed aside in the back of a damp alleyway like a discarded corpse. That’s what it had looked like when they all came into the alleyway, and had Diego not been there, Luther might have just assumed he was dead. Until he started crying when he picked him up, anyway.

The noise still echoes hauntingly in his skull.

He doesn’t really understand what’s going on with Klaus – how things so suddenly went horrifically for him, how he’s able to justify delusions riddled with plot holes in them. He doesn’t understand it, but it doesn’t really matter if he understands it or not, because it’s happening either way. He trusts what Five says is happening and trusts Grace to help if he needs medication. Whatever is happening is real enough for Klaus, and he needs to be there for him when he needs him. He wishes he could have fit in the backseat with him, but part of him worries that jostling him is exactly the opposite of what he needs in this state.

When the car stops, Luther clambers out and turns to the backseats, opening the doors. Klaus doesn’t respond as Luther leans in, manoeuvring him into his arms and pulling him out of the car. He hurries inside and hears Diego’s car pulling up just as he does so. A flash of blue and Five is there, keeping up with his pace and eying Klaus.

“Did he do anything in the car?” He asks, eyes narrowed. Luther shakes his head.

“No, nothing,” he says, looking down at him. He looks more peaceful than he has in a long time, no fear etched into his face, no panic. And yet he’s covered in bruises and mud and his own blood, and each breath that tumbles from his lips sounds pained.

Grace is already in the infirmary when they hurry in, as if she had expected them. Her face twitches as she looks at him, her smile falling, and when Luther lays him onto the bed, she runs her hands through his hair gently. She urges them outside, pulls a curtain around her and Klaus, separating them. Five teleports to her side, heard speaking in hushed voices to her.

No one says anything. Luther follows Diego to a sink to wash his hands.

“I don’t know how it got so bad,” Diego mutters, slumping into his seat.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” says Five, suddenly by their side. Diego jumps, then glowers at him briefly. “Nothing anyone could have done.” He pauses. “I suppose I should have made sure he was asleep before I left. He must have been faking it.”

“What’s important is that we found him,” says Luther, sitting a bit upright. They could argue all night that there were things they all ought to have done, but it would do nothing for Klaus now, laying in an infirmary bed.

“It might be a while before he wakes up,” Five states. No one stands up or moves to the door. “Mom’s given him painkillers and medication. We don’t know how he’ll react to it, either, but…” Five sighs. “Hopefully it works well.”

“I guess we better get comfortable then,” responds Diego, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other. Five nods his head once and slides into an open chair.

“How is he?” Asks Vanya.

“Mom couldn’t find where he was bleeding from,” he states. “Other than his stitches, there were no open wounds, and the stitches didn’t bleed that much. We’ll have to see if he remembers what happened.”

Diego frowns at that, but he doesn’t voice any questions. Everyone falls silent, mulling in their own thoughts, and Grace’s heels tap on the ground in a steady beat.

 

###

 

Everything feels pleasantly distant and warm. It’s almost a shock to the system after being so used to everything being so cold. He almost forgot that he could be this warm.

His fingers curl into a blanket, too, squeezing it tight and pulling it up to his chin. There’s no pain. He feels light headed but in a good way, the drug kind of way, and he’s certainly not about to complain.

A hand runs through his hair. He sighs, tipping his head towards it ever so slightly, and when he peels his eyes open he sees Grace hovering above him, a gentle smile on her lips.

“How do you feel, dear?” She asks. Klaus hums. “Are you sore anywhere? Do you need me to do anything for you?”

Klaus shakes his head. “ ‘m fine,” he slurs. “Good.”

She continues to run her hand through his hair, lulling him back to sleep, however brief it is. She’s there when he wakes up again, holding one of his hands in hers, her thumb running over the back of his hand.

Everything still feels hazy, but yet he feels more aware than he has in a while. He lifts his head to eye the infirmary, not as concerned as he ought to be to realise he’s there and can’t remember how he got there.

Ben’s sitting in an empty chair near the foot of his bed, sitting upright when Klaus’ eyes land on him. “Hey,” he says, his voice hesitant. “How are you?”

Klaus swallows against the dryness in his throat. “Fine,” he utters, slumping back into the bed and resisting the urge to close his eyes. He lifts his free hand up to rub against his eyes, then drops his hand heavily onto his lap. His limbs feel heavy and he feels light all at the same time. At least he’s warm, though, and there’s no pain. Hardly a present ache in his body. It’s bliss.

“Anything hurt?” Ben asks. Klaus shakes his head and can’t help but smile a little at that.

“No. No, it doesn’t, it doesn’t.” He turns his head on the pillow, eyes slipping closed once more. Grace squeezes his hand gently.

“Your siblings would like to see you,” she says. Her other hand lifts to push aside his hair again, fingertips dancing on his skin. “Would you be okay with that?”

Klaus peels his eyes open. He eyes the curtain pulled around to separate him and Grace from his siblings (sans Ben) and he pauses for a moment. Then he shrugs. He feels as if he hasn’t seen them in a while. “Okay,” he murmurs, and Grace smiles at him. She squeezes his hand before slipping away from his side, disappearing behind the curtains. He can hear her talking quietly, hear the drone of his sibling’s voices respond to her, and then the curtain’s pulled back and they’re all there, staring at him and hovering hesitantly. Klaus raises his eyebrows slightly.

“How are you feeling?” Asks Five, stepping forwards. Klaus realises they all look quite tired, stressed, still on edge as they gravitate closer, as if too heavy a step might make the ground shatter. Klaus eyes the ground. It stays intact. Five taps his foot and pulls his attention back up to him. He shrugs.

“I’m not sore,” he states.

“What happened, Klaus?” Diego asks, his face tight. Klaus hums, resting his head back. What happened? He assumes that it’s in reference to being hurt, and Klaus grimaces. He turns his head to Ben. It had worked though, hadn’t it? He’d spoken to the little girl and she’d sent him back, and now he’s home, and his siblings are real, and they care. Ben’s face twists. Does he know? Perhaps he had seen what he had done to come back – he isn’t sure how ghosts work – and it’s understandable that he might be upset if he had had to watch that. But it had been worth it if it worked.

“Do you remember?” Prods Diego. Klaus nods. Diego responds by raising his eyebrows expectantly and Klaus shrugs, looking away.

“Had to do it,” he states.

“Do _what_?”

“Jump.”

Diego’s face twists in confusion.

“What do you mean, Klaus?” Five asks, inching forwards.

“Had to jump off the bridge,” Klaus states. “To get out.”

“What?” Echoes Diego. “You did _what_?”

“I got out,” he reiterates, noticing the way Ben looks pained. “And it worked, and I don’t feel sore anymore, because I’m here, and you’re real.” He can’t help but sigh in relief. After so long, such torment, he’s finally back. Even if things still feel distorted, he knows that he met the little girl again, and he knows that he’s here. He’ll let his siblings deal with everything. He probably feels fuzzy because of the whole dying and being sent back deal, and eventually that will go away and everything will be fine. His siblings just need to get over it and understand that it isn’t that big of a deal.

“Where did you leave?” Five asks, interrupting the uproar of his siblings. Klaus hums.

“Hell.”

“Hell?”

Klaus nods. He forgot that they don't understand death and afterlife like he does now. 

“And you killed yourself to get out?”

Everyone, sans Five, saying the question, and Klaus, flinches at that. Klaus nods. Five looks disturbed, face set grimly. “And you’re fine now?”

Klaus nods. “It’s okay.”

“ _Klaus_.” That’s Allison, her voice wavering, and Klaus startles at her. Her eyes are filled with tears, her face twisted with pain, and Klaus doesn’t understand why. He blinks at her, head tipped to the side.

“I’m okay,” he states. “I’m good, now. Why are you upset?”

Allison swipes roughly at her eyes, forcing her tears aside even if they’re immediately replaced by more. When Klaus looks closer, Vanya is crying too, and Diego, and Luther are adamantly looking away, and Ben looks as if Allison and Vanya crying is about to set his waterworks off too.

“What is it?” He asks, thoroughly confused and becoming increasingly worried. “What’s wrong? I don’t understand. Why are you crying?”

And that only seems to make everything even _worse_. Allison comes close, wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug. He hesitates at the action but hurries to reciprocate the hug, quick to wrap his arms around her and squeeze back gently, though over her shoulder he gives Five a questioning look.

“You – you killed yourself, Klaus,” Allison says. “How are you-?” She cuts herself off, swallowing heavily, and Klaus shrugs.

“I – I think it’s a powers thing. I don’t typically stay dead. I think I talk to God, and She sends me back,” he explains vaguely. “And I had to do that to talk to Her and get back here.”

Allison digs the heels of her hands against her eyes, shaking her head.

“Klaus,” says Five, coming to stand by the edge of his bed. “You’re not well. While you were unconscious, mom gave you medication. You need to take it for a while for it to settle in, and all of this – everything that’s happened these past few days, will make sense. But you need to trust us.”

They’ve had this conversation before. He can remember it now, the memory shoving its way to the forefront of his mind, and he remembers talk of diagnosis and medication and trust, and he can’t help but slump when a wave of exhaustion hits him. Is he supposed to accept that his mind has managed to conjure up a whole new perception of reality? Is he supposed to be okay with the fact that he just killed himself in front of Ben because of some hallucination, or whatever it is? He doesn’t want to accept that. He thinks he’d prefer to accept that he just went to Hell and now he’s here and everything’s alright now.

“I was going to leave the country,” he murmurs, turning his head away.

“What?”

“Was gonna try and leave the country,” he repeats with a shrug. “It seemed important at the time. The best decision. Probably looked like a meth addict and smelt like a piss-covered alleyway. Don’t think I would have gotten far.” But he had believed it – it had been so believable. He knows, now, that would have been impossible, and he’d either be escorted out or perhaps even arrested, depending how erratic he acted, but that hadn’t been a possibility then.

He lifts his hands to press them into his eyes. Has anything been real these past few days? How much has been reality and how much has been his skewered perception of it? How is he supposed to trust himself in perceiving this correctly? Maybe Five himself is a hallucination and has been since his supposed return. How is he supposed to trust himself at all?

“I’m – I don’t know,” he says with a heavy sigh, shaking his head. “Help me. I need – I need help. I don’t know what to do. I need help.”

He looks up with heavy eyes, studying his siblings with a pleading expression.

“That’s what we’re doing,” says Five. “Do you trust us?”

He nods before he can doubt himself. Does he? He has to; he needs to. He does.

He wants Dave. He wants Dave and he relapsed and that was real and he’s fucked, and something’s happening and he doesn’t understand it and Allison’s still upset. He’s fucked up without even knowing it. He feels as if someone else has stolen his consciousness, as if he’s been possessed, his life spun in someone else’s hands for fun.

But he’s here right now. He’s with his siblings, with his family, and it’s not okay – but he trusts his family, and they want to help. Allison slips her hand into his and Grace is on the opposite side of his bed, raising a hand to run through his hair gently, motherly, and they’ll help him.

He squeezes Allison’s hand and listens as they all shift around the room, sitting down and staying by his side, all real and here for him, wherever he might be.


End file.
